Velvel on National Affairs

This progressive blog sets forth the personal views of the Dean of the Massachusetts School of Law on national events. Occasionally, the responses to his views or other interesting articles are also posted.

Friday, June 30, 2006

Re: George Bush’s Attempt To Silence The New York Times

June 30, 2006

Re: George Bush’s Attempt To Silence The New York Times.

From: Dean Lawrence R. VelvelVelvelOnNationalAffairs.com

Dear Colleagues:

It is beginning to look increasingly likely that the 2004 presidential election, like the 2000 election before it, was stolen for George Bush. In 2000 it was stolen in Florida (remember the elderly Jews for Buchanan and disfranchised blacks?) and in the Marble Palace in Washington. In 2004 it apparently was stolen in Ohio. Why is one not surprised that the Ohio Secretary of State responsible for the moral and perhaps legal crookedness of 2004, a right wing fundamentalist named Kenneth Blackwell, was a “principal electoral system advisor” to Katherine Harris in 2000 in Florida during the recount?

So Bush is President not just because of grave Democratic ineptitude, but also because of moral and possible legal crookedness. And now that this serially incompetent former drunk has been and is President by virtue of these machinations, he and various scumbags who do his bidding are trying to cripple the free press as much as possible. He and they are, de facto, accusing the press, particularly The New York Times, of treason for publishing the story about tracking money through Swift.

Now, as any steady reader of this blog knows, or as is known to a reader of the collection of these blogs called Blogs From The Liberal Standpoint: 2004-2005, there probably is nobody, but nobody, who is harder on The New York Times than this writer. National treasure that it nonetheless is, it is criticized here often and mercilessly, and richly deserves the criticisms. But the fact is that it has performed a public service by disclosing the Government’s secret activities like the NSA’s spying on Americans, the tracking of bank transfers, and other matters like secret renditions of prisoners for torture.

If one wants to consider the situation, one only has to think of the things we wouldn’t know at all, or might know far less about, if the Government had gotten its wish to keep its activities secret. Let’s start with the all time classic, The Pentagon Papers. The Government wanted them to be kept secret even though the Solicitor General who pushed its position in the Supreme Court later admitted -- it should have been to his deep shame -- that there was nothing in them that required secrecy. But, to then go directly to this war, and including Times reporters and its media “colleagues” like the LA Times, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe and others, the Government wanted to keep secret, and but for the press would have succeeded in keeping secret, torture and abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, Bush’s communicated desire for this, the killing of prisoners, CIA renditions for torture -- often facilitated by a secret CIA air arm, claims that the President is not subject to the law, horrific legal memoranda which attempted to legalize all these things, efforts to discredit people who were exposing the lies that took us into war, electronic spying on American civilians, tracking monies of Americans, “on the spot declassification” of information by Bush and/or Cheney for purely political purposes, covert military units created by Rumsfeld to be stationed in embassies abroad, a complete failure to listen to intelligence received secretly before the war from in-country Iraqis who made clear that there were no WMDs and who were in a position to know, and lots of other things that we know about only because the government’s desire to keep them secret did not succeed.

What we have in the current attack on The Times is “merely” typical. There is nothing new in it. As always, government wants to hide its misdeeds and serial incompetence and, to support this wish for secrecy, claims that disclosure of its actions will cripple its efforts to protect the country. The Government is particularly mad at The Times because, in fulfillment of the fundamental purpose of the First Amendment, The Times has been in the very forefront of revealing the misdeeds and continuing incompetence. So the serially incompetent former drunk, his crazed right wing buddies and henchmen (like Rove), and his ignorant followers in the citizenry are attacking The Times as hard as they can for alleged irresponsibility in order to frighten it and other media into future silence, and are even threatening to prosecute for the same purpose. The Governmental cretins also figure that this will benefit them politically because it will further arouse their wacked-out right wing supporters, and will at least temporarily persuade conservative people of better will, as so often occurs because those folks seem to have to learn the same lesson over and over and over and over again before they catch on to what is going on. (Cf. Lincoln’s you can fool some of the people all of the time.)

Well, there’s nothing to be done about it, I guess, except to let the serial incompetent and his nasty and evil right wing friends and his historically ignorant supporters rave on -- that is free speech, even if it is being practiced by particularly horrid members of what Mark Twain called our only native criminal class. But always to remember the real purpose underlying this exercise of free speech – underlying these claims of irresponsibility and even treason. Always to remember their true purpose of trying to discredit and silence a paper that has been in the forefront of revealing the Government’s morally evil and not infrequently legally criminal misconduct, plus its serial incompetence.*

*This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to respond to this email/blog, please email your response to me at velvel@mslaw.edu. Your response may be posted on the blog if you have no objection; please tell me if you do object.

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Subject: Viet Nam is part of their DNA

The phrase from Byron King's letter "VN is part of their DNA" was echoed by some of the young men who spoke about post-traumatic stress disorder in soldiers fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq in a podcast I recently listened to. One who was not even twenty yet watched his friend die after the explosion of a roadside bomb. Another, in his early twenties, said that of the four friends who started out together, two are dead and one has been returned to the U.S. severely injured.

To seek help after a harrowing experience is still not very well accepted in most branches of the military. It is not considered "macho" to have a severe emotional response to a terrible situation, although one could wonder what kind of person would not have such a response. Some are treated, some are given anti-depressants and sent back into battle, and some never have any kind of help at all.

One coping mechanism these two young men mentioned was the technique of taking the bad memory and "putting it in the closet" to be dealt with later, whenever that may be. With over 2,500 dead (which is not "just a number", no matter what the White House Secretary might say), and tens of thousands so severly injured that they will never work or lead a normal life again, I wonder what effect it will have when hundreds of thousands of returning vets with horrible experiences open the closet door to deal with these memories when they return home.

Fighting continual wars with an all-volunteer army serves only to separate the military from the civilian population, as if they were on different sides and were being pitted against each other rather than a common enemy. Reorganizing military bases into self-contained super bases takes the soldiers out of the civilian community of which they were formerly a part and futher isolates them. Splitting the citizens of a country into groups with less and less in common cannot be a good thing.

Many long-time military personnel are worried at the recruiting techniques and types of recruits being accepted into the forces now, with many of the new recruits coming out of a group that would never have been considered before. It has been shown that these recruits are not only a danger to themselves, but to anyone else with whom they work.

I think that supporting the troops in any country consists of training and equipping them properly and deploying them only when necessary, for what better support could you give a soldier than to value his/her life as much as your own and never to ask them to risk it unless there was no other option.

The problem with a government (any government) creating agencies that possess immense levels of military or other combat power is that the politicians & policy makers begin to confuse the ability merely to "exercise power" with the even more important need to "create policy." That is, the politicians mix two distinctly different things in their collective mind. Power is not policy. But power is a rather Faustian temptation to the policy-makers. Along the lines of some of what you and I have discussed, you can reach a process of what I call "strategy by targeting."

Examples are what occurred in the Kosovo-Serbia War (1990s), in which the US/NATO bombed Serbia for three months. Why? Because we could, I suppose. After all, we wanted to influence events, so what better way than to drop bombs on peoples' heads, right? I guess that the political leadership must have concluded that there was "no other way." Of course, it was not their collective heads under the bombs.

Moving forward on the time line, from an operational standpoint the Iraq war was planned by the targeting cells (i.e., fire and steel on targets), which is probably what you want if you are truly planning to wage a war on another party. Planning for fire and steel is part & parcel of what is called Phases I, II and III of war planning under US doctrine. But there was precious little attention given to what they call "Phase IV," meaning the termination of hostilities and transition to civil authority and post-combat rebuilding. This was, from what I have been told, not the choice of the senior military leadership who railed against this lapse in standard war planning doctrine.

And you see "strategy by targeting" now in things like the Iranian nuclear situation or the North Korean missile situation. You have otherwise sober people (e.g., former SecDef William Perry in the WashPost) saying things like, "well, gee... we can bomb them and take out the problem." No, not really. You can bomb the North Koreans and amplify the problem by several orders of magnitude with an overt act of war. Whose interest was Mr. Perry serving when he said that?

In some respects, I can understand how the policy-power confusion occurs. The military side is geared and equipped, both intellectually and with some very expensive materiel and training, to get things done. There is a built-in process by which smart and dedicated people focus on a desired end-state (a Clausewitzian term, and such end-state as is "desired" by the political authorities). Then the military operators go off. They plan and conduct operations, and shape events towards that "desired" purpose. This capability is a temptation that politicians find hard to resist. What did Madeleine Albright say to General Powell? "What's the use of having this wonderful military if we cannot use it?"

The logistics side, especially, is the envy of the politicians. Airlift, sealift, ground transport... you can move things from here to there, and have people available to do a lot of heavy lifting when they arrive. This is a useful capability whether it is going someplace to fight a war, or going someplace else to provide disaster relief. Really, the whole Hurricane Katrina-New Orleans thing would have been an utter shambles (far more than it was anyhow) had the military side not showed up within a few days, with the trucks and helos and ship-borne command & control (not to mention the showers and hot food on the USS Iwo Jima, which the civilian authorities utilized by the tens of thousands). The civilian side of the federal govt was simply overwhelmed by the twin hurricanes of last year, not a good omen in an era of global warming. But in New Orleans and elsewhere, for many of the military people it was just doing what they were trained to do except nobody was shooting at them. "Meals on wheels," some call it. Still, is every natural disaster now another opportunity to call in the Army & Navy? You can, I am sure, see a problem with this trend.

As far as resigning, people do exactly that but you just tend not to hear about it. A lot of "retired" senior leadership are quite vocal (e.g., General Anthony Zinni, USMC, ret.--you should hear what he says publicly, let alone in the private realm of speaking for impact to the ones who are still in positions of power. Zinni rakes the leadership over hot coals, and he has the credibility to do it.) Another vocal retiree is General Bernard Trainor, USMC, ret., who co-wrote "Cobra II" which was a rather blunt dissection of the lead-up and execution of the whole Iraq operation.

Also, on a personal level there is that hard decision... resign and drift off into the realm of history and memory; or stick around and, as the expression goes... "try and make a difference." To some people, it looks like careerism on the part of the senior leadership, and perhaps in many cases that may not be an incorrect assessment. (But just to be clear... it is not for me to make broad, sweeping judgments on the motivations of multitudes of total strangers.) But I happen to know personally a lot of people whose motivation is along the lines of... someday somebody might ask, "grandaddy, where were you during the war." And you can say, "I was involved, right in the thick of it, trying to make good decisions and not get people killed." Thus, looking at it with an element of hope in one's heart, everyone has a role to play.

In an earlier email I quoted Leo Tolstoy. "All happy families are the same," wrote the great author, "but unhappy families are each different in their own way." Still pertains, whether in Anna Karenina or during these modern times which are, I am sure you will agree, the only times we have.

I said that this would be a quick note. So I will end it here.

Best wishes,

BWK

Dean Lawrence R. Velvel wrote:

June 27, 2006

Dear Captain King:

Thank you for the email, which I strongly agree with. Let me say that the failure to know history, and the belief in American omnipotence (“Desert Storm redux”), are disasters for this country, in my judgment.

I would add, though, that if Viet Nam is a spectre haunting much of the senior officer corps, they have a duty to speak out in legitimate ways, precisely because the politicians are “both dysfunctional and intellectually bankrupt” not to mention that some are persons who, in the recent words of a columnist, and fitting one definition of coward, ran and hid from the last war, while now blithely sending members of other people’s families off to this one). To disobey orders and violate the principle of civilian control would be disastrous. Speaking out publicly, on the other hand, in service of the old military tradition of honesty, even if one is forced to resign, would be of unquestionable value to the public and Congress. So few have spoken out, however. The habit of keeping it all “within channels” and not letting Congress and the public know the truth has not served the country well during Nam or Gulf II.

There is one point you made which is factually incorrect, although, beyond merely stating this fact, I choose not to elaborate why the statement is incorrect. I do “have to worry about the future of the country or the world due to what transpires on the uniformed side of the stage.”

VN is the haunting spectre within the mind of almost every senior officer I know or have ever met. There are still a few old salts in uniform who were "there." VN is part of their DNA. The people who entered the military post-VN (1970s & 80s) grew up in a rather stilted culture of VN-remembrance. "All happy families are the same," said Leo Tolstoy. Unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways. Very unhappy families include people who live with a legacy of VN.The Junior Officers today appear not to know much about VN from their schooling (much of what they do know is wrong), and seem to think that waging war is supposed to be Desert Storm redux. In the senior leadership roles, we try to disabuse the juniors of those fantasies.

Still, it is hard to undo the processes of America's modern, broken school system. VN gets a thorough going-over at the various service War Colleges, but again it is hard to recreate the emotion of what transpired. The young officers coming back from Iraq certainly have their own new set of demons with which to wrestle.I am still not quite sure where you are coming from, Dean... I cannot speak a universal truth, applicable to every soul, but my belief is that you do not have to worry about the future of the country or the world due to what transpires on the uniformed side of the stage. The people who really need the VN lessons (we can start to call them Iraq lessons, now) drilled into their collective heads are the political masters, of both dysfunctional and intellectually bankrupt political parties. They just don't know... they just don't understand... they just don't get it. I asked a lot of fundamental, strategic oriented questions towards the end of my email to you. No offense intended, no disrespect in any way. Just you & me exchanging some thoughts. We should not have to be asking such questions at this stage of a war. Had those questions really been asked & answered some time back, we would probably not be having this conversation.

Best wishes to you,

BWK

Dean Lawrence R. Velvel wrote:

Dear Captain King:

Thanks much for the lengthy email. It will be posted on my blogsite.

I will confine my response to two words: Viet Nam. Those two words summarize the fact that I’ve heard it all before.

Thank you for your comments. I did not anticipate that our email exchange would get picked up by LewRockwell.com on June 21, but I suppose that there is no bad publicity as long as they spell your name correctly. Lew publishes my good friend Bill Bonner almost all the time. So here are a few more comments from this end. You raised a lot of points. We seem to be having a solid discussion. So I will take the time to try to address some of what you said...

I spent considerable time over the past years examining what I called "military culture". By that I mean the marriage of positivism and military institutions to create a "science" and "religion" of political power. In Latin America the Brazilian revolution led by Benjamin Constant and the republican-oriented officers against the monarchy was exemplary.

The US, presumably due to its Protestant hegemony, did not need a secular redemptive state ideology like the predominantly Catholic countries to its south. Some have insinuated that the privileged location of General Washington's Masonic lodge presages this movement in Central and South America. In any event by the time Mahan published Sea Power, the confluence of science and geopolitics was already shaping the officer class in the rest of the hemisphere. This "modernising" force was used by the US as the interface to penetrate the civilian cadres too. Institutions like the National Defence University emerged in the 1950s to shape the "modernising elite".

What I am getting at is that although the military in the US has always been a distinct career track from the civil service and the "elected" political leadership, the Cold War created an incestuous network of civilian-military bureaucrats who make up the "dilettante soldiers" like Rumsfeld and "dilettante politicians" like Powell. These people live in a world devoid of the historical military virtues AND absent from any democratic culture. They are equivalent to the CFOs or controllers in the corporate sector who lack both entrepreneurial/industrial imagination and actual industrial knowledge/craft skills.

This however is the caste of "bureaucrats" in the Stalinist tradition, who run the US. The fact that many neo-lib/cons consider themselves ex-Trotskyists notwithstanding, the US is run by and supported by the Stalinists.

Captain King's regrets are certainly to be commiserated but, I fear there is no residue in the political or military class worth mentioning which would even understand the courage to "violate a bureaucratic order" and resign to accept the consequences. Robert McNamara set the standard by which the War Office was to be run and paved the way for the current lamentable situation. To this day he is an unreconstructed example of US leadership since the end of WWII. (As can be so poignantly seen in his own performance in Fog of War). I fear what the US and Britain need is not the resignation of honourable whistleblowers but the actual refusal of the General Staff to carry out a war in violation of the Constitution. Since most US Americans have an extremely naive view of the military and its relationship to state power in the US, the idea of a refusal by the officer class to obey the President would cause a constitutional crisis like a golpe de estado (of the type the US government has been trying to instigate in Venezuela and has incited elsewhere in the past: e.g. Brazil) might seem the paramount implication of such a refusal.

To assume this however is to ignore the traditional duty even anchored in the UCMJ with respect to refusing to obey unlawful orders. It also ignores the duty to uphold the Constitution imposed on every recipient of the President's Commission, esp. those whose commission must be confirmed by the Senate. (Of course the new theorists of a sovereign presidency would like to see the analogy to the King's commission by which officers serve at his majesty's pleasure.)

In short, it is incumbent on the commanding officers, whether they be general, fleet, or field grade, to uphold the Constitution and not the will of a sovereign president (in council). What prevents this from happening is not the VN ghost or some constitutional humility but the domination of the political-military apparatus by a civilian-military bureaucracy which is accountable to no one with standing as a constitutional person (judiciary, legislature, executive, citizenry).

This bureaucracy itself is a violation of the Constitution-- which did not envision a standing army. The legal fiction that biennial war appropriations bills mean that the Armed Forces are not standing is the basis upon which this bureaucracy has infested the entire constitutional waters in which the USA floats. Eisenhower's warnings notwithstanding, the USA has truly been "reduced to the world's largest carrier task force" where command has been surrendered to vacationing accountants on a passing cruise ship under escort of a pirate corsair.

It will take more than a bit of honesty and hand-wringing to repel those who have boarded and taken the helm. But it would be a great service if the officers would come back from the head, mess or after steering and display some semblance of the leadership expected of their grade and rank.

Most respectfully yours,

Dr. Wilkinson

June 27, 2006

Dear Captain King:

Thank you for the email, which I strongly agree with. Let me say that the failure to know history, and the belief in American omnipotence (“Desert Storm redux”), are disasters for this country, in my judgment.

I would add, though, that if Viet Nam is a spectre haunting much of the senior officer corps, they have a duty to speak out in legitimate ways, precisely because the politicians are “both dysfunctional and intellectually bankrupt” not to mention that some are persons who, in the recent words of a columnist, and fitting one definition of coward, ran and hid from the last war, while now blithely sending members of other people’s families off to this one). To disobey orders and violate the principle of civilian control would be disastrous. Speaking out publicly, on the other hand, in service of the old military tradition of honesty, even if one is forced to resign, would be of unquestionable value to the public and Congress. So few have spoken out, however. The habit of keeping it all “within channels” and not letting Congress and the public know the truth has not served the country well during Nam or Gulf II.

VN is the haunting spectre within the mind of almost every senior officer I know or have ever met. There are still a few old salts in uniform who were "there." VN is part of their DNA. The people who entered the military post-VN (1970s & 80s) grew up in a rather stilted culture of VN-remembrance. "All happy families are the same," said Leo Tolstoy. Unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways. Very unhappy families include people who live with a legacy of VN.

The Junior Officers today appear not to know much about VN from their schooling (much of what they do know is wrong), and seem to think that waging war is supposed to be Desert Storm redux. In the senior leadership roles, we try to disabuse the juniors of those fantasies. Still, it is hard to undo the processes of America's modern, broken school system. VN gets a thorough going-over at the various service War Colleges, but again it is hard to recreate the emotion of what transpired. The young officers coming back from Iraq certainly have their own new set of demons with which to wrestle.

I am still not quite sure where you are coming from, Dean... I cannot speak a universal truth, applicable to every soul, but my belief is that you do not have to worry about the future of the country or the world due to what transpires on the uniformed side of the stage. The people who really need the VN lessons (we can start to call them Iraq lessons, now) drilled into their collective heads are the political masters, of both dysfunctional and intellectually bankrupt political parties. They just don't know... they just don't understand... they just don't get it.

I asked a lot of fundamental, strategic oriented questions towards the end of my email to you. No offense intended, no disrespect in any way. Just you & me exchanging some thoughts. We should not have to be asking such questions at this stage of a war. Had those questions really been asked & answered some time back, we would probably not be having this conversation.

Tuesday, June 27, 2006

Re: For Purely Political Reasons There Almost Surely Will Be No Major Release Of Prisoners Held At Gitmo And Other Prisons

June 27, 2006

Dear Captain King:

Thank you for the email, which I strongly agree with. Let me say that the failure to know history, and the belief in American omnipotence (“Desert Storm redux”), are disasters for this country, in my judgment.

I would add, though, that if Viet Nam is a spectre haunting much of the senior officer corps, they have a duty to speak out in legitimate ways, precisely because the politicians are “both dysfunctional and intellectually bankrupt” (not to mention that some are persons who, in the recent words of a columnist, and fitting one definition of coward, ran and hid from the last war, while now blithely sending members of other people’s families off to this one). To disobey orders and violate the principle of civilian control would be disastrous. Speaking out publicly, on the other hand, in service of the old military tradition of honesty, even if one is forced to resign, would be of unquestionable value to the public and Congress. So few have spoken out, however. The habit of keeping it all “within channels” and not letting Congress and the public know the truth has not served the country well during Nam or Gulf II.

I shall post your excellent email.*

Sincerely yours,

Lawrence Velvel

*If you wish to respond to this email/blog, please email your response to me at velvel@mslaw.edu. Your response may be posted on the blog if you have no objection; please tell me if you do object.

VN is the haunting spectre within the mind of almost every senior officer I know or have ever met. There are still a few old salts in uniform who were "there." VN is part of their DNA. The people who entered the military post-VN (1970s & 80s) grew up in a rather stilted culture of VN-remembrance. "All happy families are the same," said Leo Tolstoy. Unhappy families are unhappy in their own ways. Very unhappy families include people who live with a legacy of VN.

The Junior Officers today appear not to know much about VN from their schooling (much of what they do know is wrong), and seem to think that waging war is supposed to be Desert Storm redux. In the senior leadership roles, we try to disabuse the juniors of those fantasies. Still, it is hard to undo the processes of America's modern, broken school system. VN gets a thorough going-over at the various service War Colleges, but again it is hard to recreate the emotion of what transpired. The young officers coming back from Iraq certainly have their own new set of demons with which to wrestle.

I am still not quite sure where you are coming from, Dean... I cannot speak a universal truth, applicable to every soul, but my belief is that you do not have to worry about the future of the country or the world due to what transpires on the uniformed side of the stage. The people who really need the VN lessons (we can start to call them Iraq lessons, now) drilled into their collective heads are the political masters, of both dysfunctional and intellectually bankrupt political parties. They just don't know... they just don't understand... they just don't get it.

I asked a lot of fundamental, strategic oriented questions towards the end of my email to you. No offense intended, no disrespect in any way. Just you & me exchanging some thoughts. We should not have to be asking such questions at this stage of a war. Had those questions really been asked & answered some time back, we would probably not be having this conversation.

Best wishes to you,

BWK

----- Original Message -----

From: Thomas WilkinsonTo: Dean Lawrence R. VelvelSent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 12:27 PMSubject: Re: For Purely Political Reasons There Almost Surely Will Be No Major Release Of Prisoners Held At Gitmo And Other Prisons.

Dear Dean Velvel:

I tend to disagree with your reasoning as to why the GITMO prisoners will not be released.

In my opinion GITMO (and the undiscussed secret prisons in other places) have become an established part of the US national security apparatus. General paranoia and bipartisan consensus on this issue would mean that whereas Republicans could lose an election because of Bush or Cheney their principals have both parties committed to the present inevitable policies. The comparison with Johnson and Nixon does not fit. Johnson got reelected from the White House as did Nixon. Party strength was simply not available to overcome incumbency. Add to this the fact that the Republican party has been in control of the White House for more years than any Democrats (Roosevelt being an exception), there is no real risk to the Republicans. Congressional elections are certainly more volatile but even the "anti-war movement" does not seem to have changed the balance in Congress significantly.

What I find more interesting is that the US government has been dominated by an ultraconservative, militarist axis of political forces anchored in the South and the Southwest. These regions not only have authoritarian and violent colonial and slave-holding pasts much more recent than the murderous Massachusetts Bay colonists, they have been enriched by the migration of the most conservative elements from the Northeast who have taken their capital as far away as possible from "liberal" Yankees. That means the penal policy of which GITMO is just a recently high profile part is driven by and supported from leadership with sentimental ties to lynching and other extrajudicial violence in inverse proportion to the lightness of the skin colour.

With an economic and foreign policy aimed at global war, this penal policy has become and will remain a permanent fixture in US policy no matter what government gets elected. If the Republicans lose elections it is only because someone actually dares to contest one. The release of GITMO prisoners presents more a matter of style than substance for the American electorate. As for foreign opinion-- this has never been important for the US electorate with its defiant ignorance of what anyone outside of the US thinks (let alone where they even live or what language they speak, etc.)

Were the people in the US to see that GITMO is an "offshore" like the Grand Caymans and to see that the impoverishment of the average US citizen is directly related to the regime of GITMO and Enron, there might be some move for change. But I am not holding my breath.

Kind regards,

tpw

Dean Lawrence R. VelvelJune 19, 2006Re: For Purely Political Reasons There Almost Surely Will BeNo Major Release Of Prisoners Held At Gitmo And Other Prisons.From: Dean Lawrence R. VelvelVelvelOnNationalAffairs.com

Dear Colleagues:

A few days ago Tom Ashbrook, on his radio program “On Point,” had some radio talking heads (what else does one do on radio?) who were discussing Guantanamo. One of them said that he thought the Bush Administration had decided simply to tough out the situation there (regardless of the increasing uproar about it overseas). There would be no release of prisoners, in his judgment, under this Administration. It was too deeply concerned over the repercussions if a released prisoner (or released prisoners) were later to be found to have participated in a new act of terrorism against the United States. Another talking head said that there would be no release of prisoners because that would mean 400 or 500 additional men would be telling stories all over the world about American mistreatment. There would be one released prisoner for every talk show in the world, I think the joke was. And the stories being told worldwide would create a massive outcry around the world for Bush, Cheney and company to be tried before international tribunals for violations of the laws of war.

Of course, I would personally add, Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the others would not show up for their trials. So they would have to be tried in absentia (as would likely also be the case for Bush’s English poodle). This, I think, would not, for many reasons, pose a large problem, since there would be much evidence anyway. The only way to avoid the trials would be for America to bribe foreign countries not to pursue trials in the same way that we always bribe them to do our imperial bidding, by foreign aid, military aid, trade help, etc. But whether that would even work this time, with 400 or 500 men all over the world talking about their experiences at Gitmo and elsewhere, is subject to question. Equally subject to question is whether, if the Democrats win in 2008, they would even be willing to offer such bribes to save the derrieres of Bush, et. al. Indeed, though it wouldn’t happen, wouldn’t it be ironic and wonderful, were John McCain to win the 2008 election, if he then refused to attempt the bribes, with his refusal being payback for what Bush pulled on him in South Carolina?

Ah, the mind reels at the theoretical possibilities. But let’s forget about the more far-out possibilities. Let’s focus instead on what certainly is real. It is ever more widely bruited, and accepted, that the vast preponderance of the prisoners in Gitmo were no more than low level types at most, and some or lots were wholly innocent -- they were simply arrested and turned over to the Americans by warlords who wanted to collect the large rewards we were offering. We also know the uproars that resulted when even a few of our former prisoners at Gitmo and elsewhere told their stories to the media and other governments. What these fact plainly mean, what they inevitably mean, is that the prisoners at Guantanamo (and elsewhere) almost certainly cannot be released, and will not be released, before the 2006 Congressional elections and the 2008 Presidential and Congressional elections. Not only can the Republicans not afford the political fallout if some of the released prisoners engaged in new acts of terrorism (as could well occur because many of them may now hate us who did not hate or lift a finger against us before), the Republicans equally cannot at this time afford the additional hatred of us that will arise all over the world, with the political and economic problems this would bring, if 400 or 500 men are let go and start telling their stories to media and governments all over the world. Nor can the Republicans afford to have people all over the world calling for the trial of their President and Vice President on charges of war crimes, which would bring yet more political and economic problems.

Now, let’s be explicit on a point that flows from this. This writer is saying that, regardless of whether people in Gitmo and our other prisons abroad are guilty or innocent, and even if 90 percent are innocent or at most were very low level, for political reasons it is very unlikely that there will be any major or wholesale release of prisoners, be they innocent or guilty, be they dangerous or wholly non-threatening. For even if there was never another act of terrorism by any released prisoners, a major release would be pregnant with the possibility of an electoral disaster for the Republicans -- and for their Democrat neo-Republican friends like Joe Lieberman -- because releasees will be telling their stories worldwide. Right, truth, and morality will have nothing to do with the likely absence of a major release. Politics will trump all. That is the nature of this administration, and is almost surely what is going to happen here.

Now, it is obvious, as one knows from a few emails in response to prior postings as well as from simply being in America for over six decades, that there may be those who refuse to believe this, perhaps mainly because they don’t want to believe it, are jingoes, are xenophobes, and/or are wacked out right wingers. The refusal of belief puts me in mind of a comment made here a few years ago, when this blogger said, and as far as I know was the only person to say at the time, that the reason the administration did not want Gitmo prisoners tried in civilian courts is that necessary evidence had been obtained from them by means (duress and torture) that would cause it to be tossed out by the civilian courts. (Whereas military courts, being subject to Rumsfeld and Bush, would allow the evidence.) This point was not discussed, mentioned or faced by the media (or anyone else) as far as I know, nor did people wish to believe it, I think. Now, of course, it has been admitted to be correct by the administration on a number of occasions. Well, in the same vein, one day we almost surely will find out -- maybe five years from now, maybe 50 years from now -- that there was no likelihood, maybe even no possibility at all, of a major release of prisoners, no matter how innocent or low level and unimportant, or non-dangerous they were, because a major release would have caused the electoral crucification of Republicans (and Democrat fellow travelers like Lieberman).

Of course, Bush and company, and their believers and supporters in the media and internet worlds -- their supporting bloggers and emailers -- will claim that politics have nothing to do with keeping prisoners in Gitmo. Rather, they will claim, there are good reasons to keep people there. Maybe the people are dangerous, they will say. Or their cases are being heard, they will say -- although it would seem that whatever process of alleged military justice was supposed to occur at Gitmo either is hardly occurring at all or is grinding so slowly as to be a farce. Well, as any lawyer or politician knows, there are always reasons which can be put forward to try to justify what one is doing. The worst tyrants the world has ever seen had reasons which they put forward for their actions. We have given reasons for every one of the 14 times - - from Hawaii in 1893 to Iraq in 2003 (and not including World Wars I and II) - - when Stephen Kinzer finds that America has been the main cause of the overthrow of foreign governments because we didn’t like them and didn’t want them around, and the reasons we have given from Hawaii to Iraq were often smokescreens, false, baloney (like WMDs) intended to try to hide our real reasons.

I don’t think that the reasons we will hear to allegedly justify keeping all the Gitmo and other prisoners in custody will be the real reasons either. Even if they are sometimes true (e.g., almost certainly some of the Gitmo prisoners are dangerous characters who should not be let out), the reasons we will hear will not in the main be the truly motivating reasons. The truly motivating reasons will be political: if 400 or 500 guys now in Gitmo and other prisons are released and are able to tell the media and governments all over the world the stories of what happened to them and what they saw in Gitmo and elsewhere, the Republicans’ (and neo-Republican Democrats’) electoral chances will be swamped, the Republicans will suffer the greatest electoral disaster the country has seen since Johnson creamed Goldwater and Nixon smashed McGovern. With this possibility lurking, perhaps even certain, if there is a release, the chances of a major release by this 200 percent politically minded administration range from slim to none regardless of what may be true or just or moral. And slim, as they say, has just left town.*

Whenever I read these litanies about the greatness of soldiers (esp. those elite units), I have to bite my tongue. In a country which ostensibly stands for peace and freedom, I can see no special reason to praise janissaries and praetorians.

Historically speaking, the units to which most US military attach special pride have been bands of murderers and assassins. There are countries which might claim pride to have soldiers whose dedication and training made them suited to defend their countries or peoples in the face of overwhelming odds. This scarcely applies to any historical unit of the US military and certainly not the special warfare units founded in the post-war era.

Of course within the military (like all strict hierarchical organisations) there is a cult surrounding the units with particularly "selective" and elite membership. However I cannot think of a single country whose elite units are not simply more exclusive in their corruption or violence.It strains the imagination to think which part of the US military and security apparatus deserves anyone's respect simply because of what the Captain USNR calls "supremely difficult things in life". The supremely difficult thing in life for such people is that which most alludes them-- pursuing life-preserving instead of life-destroying professions. I seriously doubt if the captain manages the same esteem for the nurses and orderlies who maintain the decrepit US public health system in the face of overwhelming odds. Even a dustman in Manhattan or Newark has earned more respect than a mere major general, no matter how decorated.

After Mr Cockburn's recent comments on "blogging", which have in fact confirmed a feeling I have had about a lot of this "white noise", I do wonder what these folks are doing or thinking when they write (your point well taken). Every once in a while I fire a comment off at some suspicious or specious argument in CP and get locked into an enormously silly debate with people who seem to be "hitmen" for the Right.

I do think that a lot of these "answers" are part of the monitoring of the "netwaves" by the Fouchés of today. No one else takes so much time for sophistry.

Your arguments were pleasantly cogent. May we both be pleased not to have to defend the US occupation within operational modus-- obviating your option to destroy the alleged bunker.But to give you a bit of "bunker" anecdote-- between us: when I first moved to this town some 25 years ago the US consulate was in a noble neighbourhood with normal security conditions-- like any other imperial consulate. Now it is located directly next to the central rail station. The whole area is filled with vile security barriers and the taxis are no longer placed conveniently for the rail passengers. This is to "protect" a consulate that does not even need to be located at such a vulnerable traffic junction. Is the US not endangering all the rail traffic through Dusseldorf by this choice of location?

The US government also tried to pressure the Berlin government to divert all the traffic in the city centre so that it could build its embassy on the old pre-war site. As far as I know this has been resisted-- primarily because Berlin has no money for such an extravagance and the US never pays for such things.

In short, although I do not really want a full citation on your site, it may be a further support for your argument (not that the Right cares) to say that throughout the world the US puts innocent people in harm's way and accepts no responsibility for this. Were the myopic JAG officer who wrote you to take that into account-- maybe even reading a bit of British colonial history-- he could under conditions of sobriety or Stockholm syndrome imagine a proper revulsion at hostage taking-- the basic principle guiding the American way of waging war.

Kindly,

tpw

Dean Lawrence R. VelvelJune 19, 2006Re: E-Mail Correspondence With Captain Byron King Of The United States Navy Reserve.

No, we have never met. But I read your post on LewRockwell.com, lifted from your blog comments.

By way of professional courtesy, as one attorney to another, I beg to point out a few things based upon what I know from first hand knowledge or from other very reliable sources.

US Army Major General Caldwell, whom you disparaged, is nobody's "yes man." He is an official US Army spokesman, whose job is to speak to the media. He is also a trained Army Ranger (it is, in its own way, as hard a job to be a Ranger as it is to accomplish most of the supremely difficult things in life, IMHO), with a long list of direct action experience under his belt. He is fully aware of the vagaries of "first reports" from combat front lines.

Caldwell's current job involves sifting through whatever comes in, and attempting to present an accurate summary of events to the media, particularly to the "Green Zone" warriors who seldom, if ever, venture outside their gated community. Apropos your comments, there was initial confusion about "the little girl" (whomever she is, and we do not know if she is al-Zarqawi's daughter) who was killed in the bombing of al-Zarqawi's safe-house. Different reports from different people, transmitted from the front lines at about the same time, referred to her as a "female," "woman," "young woman," and "child of indeterminate age." Hence the differing initial reports, which were not "lies" as you so boldly mischaracterized them. Another way of stating it is that the world's news madia can have its news "fast" or it can have it "completely accurate," but not both. Remember that the next time you pick up a newspaper.

The last time I saw General Caldwell, he was riding the Metro in Washington DC---in uniform, with his name tag visible. I asked him why a Major General in his position would be riding the Metro, and he replied that "it is one more way to see what is going on in the world." He also noted to me that "four star generals ought to spend less time in their staff cars, and more time riding the Metro." So you might consider giving the man a break, or at least not call him a "liar" when he is doing his job.

al-Zarqawi's safe house was constructed out of reinforced concrete and steel I-Beams. (Is your house built that way?) Some of the walls were 10 inches thick of poured concrete. This was no tumbledown shack by the railroad track; no little "farm house" in the middle of a date palm orchard. It was no easy "takedown" for any combat team, let alone the relatively small group of special forces that fingered Zarqawi to the specific location at a specific time. "Surround and wait" was not an option under the circumstances. In addition, the occupants must have had some realization that they were found out, because somebody on the inside started shooting at the US forces on the outside. Hence they called for ordnance support, and the "operational fires" commander sent the F-16s overhead.

The F-16s were on a detached air support mission, with no anticipation by the pilots that they were going to be called to bomb al-Zarqawi's house. (One F-16 was in the midst of aerial refueling and had to break off from the airborne tanker to fly to the target area.) Of the two 500-pound bombs dropped in the engagement, the first was laser-designated and the second was GPS-guided. They were both fused to explode after penetrating into the house, as opposed to detonating on first contact with an outside, concrete wall. That al-ZArqawi's body was intact, and that he was alive for some time post-bombing, indicates that he had taken shelter in the basement part of the structure which is where he was found by the Iraqi officers who first entered the place. So the field evidence is that al-Zarqawi apparently knew that something was coming at him (he probably heard the jet noise, which is loud as hell), and took cover. It was not as if al-Zarqawi shielded the little girl with his body, in one last act of supreme and altruistic heroism.

Among other things, you wrote:"One last point inherent in killing the little girl who may or may not have been Zarqawi’s daughter. It is about the question of courage. I suppose one has to expect that a country whose moral reasoning is as screwed up as ours would get the question of courage all wrong too."

I disagree. al-Zarqawi's stock in trade was the indiscriminate bomb, attacking market places, squares, mosques, etc. His end came at the hands of pilots who could, and did, deliberately and accurately place target-appropriate weapons within a few feet of the aim point. As for "screwed up" moral reasoning, believe it or not, many of the people within the US military who were instrumental in developing "precision" weapons over the past 30 years or so were devoutly religious (the late Admiral Arthur Cebrowski comes to mind.) There was a school of thought along the lines of Catholic "Just War" theory inherent in the focus of the respective weapons programs. That is, if war will be waged by the politicians, then it should be conducted in such a manner that will minimize the death and suffering of the innocent. The result was that US conventional weapons are of such accuracy as to make it possible for the policy-makers to pull back from Cold War doctrines involving use of nuclear weapons in war fighting. (another discussion entirely...)

al-Zarqawi chose to lead the self-styled romantic life of a combatant leader, using brutal methods of terrorism to fight an asymmetric war against the U.S. and its coalition allies. In the course of his abbreviated life, al-Zarqawi created for himself a war zone in whatever land he dwelt (Jordan, Afghanistan and eventually Iraq). He was dogmatic, a true believer, a fanatic, a “world-improver” who desired to remake the planet in his own image. al-Zarqawi was, in so many respects, emblematic of Hannah Arendt's depiction of the “banality of evil.”

Whoever was there in the ill-fated house, it was al-Zarqawi who killed them. He knew that he was the subject of a comprehensive manhunt, with a $25 million bounty on his head. He knew that his pursuers were competent, and that any moment could be his last. Yet al-Zarqawi chose to make a call on a certain locale, in the company of others including the women and/or child. When surrounded, someone in al-Zarqawi’s entourage chose to fire on his pursuers in true Bonnie & Clyde fashion, rather than to surrender. al-Zarqawi headed for the basement. And then the bombs fell.

Thus to the very end, al-Zarqawi was a killer. Others died? If so, it was the culmination of a chain of events set in motion entirely by the late and unlamented al Qaeda leader. The death of any innocent is a sad thing, but it was al-Zarqawi’s doing. I am reminded of the words of Herman Melville who wrote the tale of Captain Ahab and his ship the Pequod, which “like Satan, would not sink to Hell till she had dragged a living part of Heaven along with her.”

Dear Captain King:

Thank you for your very fine e-mail. I appreciate it. There are points of great interest in it, including points I agree with. I do have a few responses, however,

1. Given your admitted reliance on “very reliable sources,” I presume someof the information in your letters -- information that is not yet publicly known insofar as I am aware (please correct me if I am mistaken about this) -- was obtained from high Pentagon sources. Why? Did you obtain it to respond to my posting? Were you “officially commissioned” to respond to it, so to speak, or asked to respond to it? This all would be hard to believe, for I do not attribute to myself any such importance. (I was not even able to make Nixon’s enemies list as far as I know.) But whydid you feel it necessary to respond, and to include information not publicly known (insofar as I am aware): information such as I-beam reinforcements, walls ten inches thick, where Zarqawi is thought to have been in the house when the bombs struck, the fact that he was not sheltering another person with his body, the implication that others might not have been in the basement since they were dead when we took the house (or the rubble), and the fact that Zarqawi was not one of those who fired the shots. You or your “very reliable sources” are not merely speculating about some or all of these things, or releasing additional incomplete information, in order to avoid or put down some type of feared criticism of what we did, are you?

2. For all the fine, even noble traits you find in General Caldwell, a finding Iwould never quarrel with, the fact is that, even though you say “He is fully aware of the vagaries of ‘first reports’ from combat front lines,” he was reported in the media to have at first flatly denied that a young girl was killed. If the media report was wrong, he, you or the military should say so. If the media report was not wrong, then he flatly denied something he may not have had information about. If he did this, there is a word for such a denial; but I need not repeat the word. Of course, maybe he had been assured by others that there had been no little girl there, so that he simply passed on erroneous information that he had been given and in good faith believed. If that is the case, you, he and/or the military should say so. What is not permissible, and deserves the word I shall not use, is to have flatly denied something that proved true, and to have done so without any subsequent reasonable explanation for the failure of truth.

To say that the news media “can have its news ‘fast’ or it can have it ‘completely accurate’” is wholly beside the point here, and is indeed, an attempt at deflection. The military should not be putting out false statements. If a military spokesman does not know or must refuse to state the facts (as with regard to the location of the persons in the car that drove away), he should say so. What is impermissible, and deeply contrary to the military’s own strictures on honesty of officers, is to tell untruths. It is, of course, extremely sad, and deeply disheartening, that ever since Viet Nam people are prone to disbelieve the military and the government because of the astounding countertradition of untruths that has been built up in opposition to the officer corp’s prior longstanding tradition of truth.

3. It is, I think, perhaps somewhat generous to say merely that it is illogical,and a mere attempt at deflection, to argue that a pilot killing people without serious risk to himself, or a weapons control officer on the ground hundreds or thousands of miles away doing the same, is showing courage because the target was an indiscriminate murderer. The question of courage has nothing to do with whether the target is a Zarqawi or a baby. It has to do, rather, with whether the person firing the weapon is himself or herself at serious risk. I’m confident you must in reality know this.

4. One shakes one’s head at the concept of the devoutly religious developingthe kinds of massively destructive weapons we have today. Not to mention that those who believe in the concept of “just war” might be shaking their heads in wonderment at the point you make, since many of them, I gather, feel that this is nota just war. Not to mention that tens of thousands -- could it conceivably be 100,000 or more, as some say? -- have been killed by our weapons. So much for the humaneness of precision weapons.

5. I’m sorry, Captain, but the fact is that we killed the little girl. Zarqawi’spresence is the reason we killed her, but we, not he, killed her. It is rhetorical sleight of hand, it is a lawyer’s trick (and also a rhetorical trick of right wingers who have written me) to say that he killed her. One could say that he was responsible by hispresence for the fact that we killed her, one could also reasonably say, as many have, that it was immoral for him to have put a little girl in danger, but the fact remains that it was we who killed her. I say this even though I am fully aware, as said a few times in my blog, that I would almost surely have made the same decision to bomb the house had it been me on the scene making the decision. And I would have done it to safeguard the Americans on the scene from possible death or wounds. But I am at least cognizant of the truth of who killed the girl and have the honesty to concede it, unlike some of the right wing nuts who have written me crudely ignorant, savage emails cheering on all our destructive efforts and more or less hoping that we kill as many Muslims as possible.

By the way, don’t you think it entirely possible that the insurgents in Iraq are considering how to get back at us by killing Iraqi officials, American officers, and such like. And don’t you think that American intelligence and Iraqi intelligence know this and perhaps have warned those who are potential targets? -- who probably strongly suspect it anyway? If these things are true, and if one or more of the possible targets are killed by insurgent bombs, and if women or children or fellow officials or fellow officers are with them and are also killed in the blast, are you going to say it is the target(s) who killed these other people rather than the insurgents? Are you going to say it was the Iraqi officials or the American officers who killed them? I seriously doubt that you or any other American will say that. Yet that, of course, is exactly what you are saying about Zarqawi. The unhappy fact, which is rebounding against us worldwide, is that we apply wholly different standards of logic depending on whether someone is on our side or the other side. And then we wonder why others consider us vast hypocrites and hate our guts.*

> Dear Dean Lawrence R. Velvel:>> Once again a very thoughtful topic and one that helps us define ourselves according to where we stand on the issue.>> Re: For Purely Political Reasons There Almost Surely Will Be> No Major Release Of Prisoners Held At Gitmo And Other Prisons>> "For Purely Political Reasons" is a phrase that each of us uses to disguise our misdeeds with the patina legitimacy.>> The Guantanamo Bay military base is leasehold gained from starting a war against Spain just over a century ago. Spain was a nation that like Iraq today had no ability to wage war, but had resources and property that could be claimed by the victors.>> It seems to me that the sovereign nation of Cuba has a claim against the United States for its violation of international law* and the terms of its leasehold.>> It also seems to me that the American government faced with the shame of its acts at this military base must raze the site and close the base to save it from becoming a monument site to remember the American atrocities of both Iraq campaigns.>> It is sad to hear Americans justify the lawlessness of its government especially about its crimes against humanity; it is understandable to hear Americans defend its government in spite of its crime against humanity. For in a nation that lacks the ability to forgive others and only seeks to punish them through vengeance, can never acknowledge these acts.>> Would it were true that we were a nation of second chances, for we truly need a fresh start.>> Cordially,>> L. Bruens

Our military were sent to Iraq for the express purpose of KILLING ARAB MUSLIMS! They were sent there to do that because Arab Muslims are the ones who have started an unconventional war with us. Those Arab Muslims are, in their perverse, ugly and evil beliefs little different than were the Japanese when they decided to become our enemies in the 1940s.

The whole purpose of our military campaign against Japan was simply TO KILL JAPS, and to kill as many of them as we could until they threw in the towel. We did just that and, eventually, they did just that. Where's the count of the Japanese women and children we killed in doing it. Fact is, nobody here gave a damn about that then because winning the war was the ONLY objective, period.

The ONLY way we're going to win against these Arab Moslem bastards is to KILL, KILL and keep on KILLING until THEY throw in the towel or until ALL OF THEM ARE DEAD! As far as I'm concerned, I don't personally give a damn how many of THEIR little girls died when we bombed whatever. I only care that more of those bastards die every day than do our people.

The only good Moslem is a dead Moslem! The Indians we dispatched a hundred years ago.

Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Re: Book Review By Joanna Daneman

June 21, 2006

Re: Book Review By Joanna Daneman.

From: Dean Lawrence R. VelvelVelvelOnNationalAffairs.com

Dear Colleagues:

Recently the blogs that this author posted in 2004 and 2005 were organized by subject matter and printed as a book entitled Blogs From The Liberal Standpoint: 2004-2005. One of the purposes of the book lay in the hope that it would contribute to getting the blogs’ ideas into the public arena. (For this reason, the price for the book (ten dollars) is nominal by today’s standards.)

The book is available from MSL and on Amazon. On June 20th, one of the more prolific reviewers on Amazon, Joanna Daneman, wrote a review of the book. Though she specifically says that she is not herself a liberal, Ms. Daneman wrote a review that an author has to be deeply pleased with. It has been appended below in the hope that it may contribute to the book accomplishing its purpose of putting ideas from the blogs into the public arena.

Given the “put up” nature of so much that occurs today, I should say that I do not know Ms. Daneman.*

The thinking man's liberal, June 20, 2006

Reviewer: Joanna Daneman (Middletown, DE USA)Despite not being of the liberal persuasion myself, I admire the way Professor Velvel takes on the educational establishment and government policies. And sometimes I agree with him. Regardless of agreement, I enjoy these blogs. The writing is crisp, clear, always interesting. And the great thing is that the blogs are relatively short articles, good for a mental break.

Dr. Velvel's take on how elite educational institutions are deliberately (he says) excluding middle and lower class student is nothing short of brilliant analysis. And his take on the case of academic plagiarism in one noted situation is equally amazing. Velvel analyses each sentence uttered in defense of this lapse by the perpetrator with a lawyer's ear for fine nuances of truth and untruth.

The blogs are normally available to readers online, but this is a very handy format for reading at your leisure away from the computer screen. Every time I flip open a page at random, I find something that makes me think. Even when I disagree with the blogs, I find them well-argued, well-written and above all, thought-provoking. I'd recommend this to anyone who IS a liberal in order to learn how to reason and argue and to conservatives to learn how to sharpen their opposing points. Dr. Velvel is a formidable writer and thinker.

Myfiles/Blogspot/Blogltr.DanemanReview

*This posting represents the personal views of Lawrence R. Velvel. If you wish to respond to this email/blog, please email your response to me at velvel@mslaw.edu. Your response may be posted on the blog if you have no objection; please tell me if you do object.

Re: E-Mail Correspondence With Captain Byron King of the United States Navy Reserve

----- Original Message -----

From: JohnTo: Velvel@MSLaw.eduSent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 10:59 AMSubject: Re: E-Mail Correspondence With Captain Byron King of the United States Navy Reserve

I don't think I could improve upon your response to Captain King; as a former naval officer myself --albeit nothing so grandiose as a Captain-- I merely want to express my support for your position.

Captain King, of course, is trying to hide behind an argument from authority. We're supposed to believe that because someone is a former Ranger, an official spokesman, and a General who rides the metro, that he must not be a liar. Surely, he jests. In my experience, the military is full of liars, but one need not rely on my anecdotes: a casual examination, over time, of the statements coming from the mouths of "official military spokesmen" is incontrovertible proof that the military lies, and does so routinely. The fact that these spokesmen are clever enough to hide behind a curtain of ambiguity whenever possible, to cloth themselves in "truths" that are freshly laundered, and to exploit every ounce of trust they can milk from the lowing herd, does not make them honest. Need we say anything more than "Jessica Lynch" or "Pat Tillman?" Furthermore, the fact that someone in our politicized military has managed to advance to the general ranks is hardly an indicator of integrity. It would be a far better bet to take the word of most Lieutenants --as long as they're not "official spokesmen"-- over the word of just about any General.

Now, I'm not a religious man myself, but I find it even more despicable that Captain King seeks to hide behind the authority of the Church. By the Captain's logic, we must suppose that if we were using weapons that had been designed at the Vatican under the leadership of the Pope, we could employ them in any manner we saw fit without troubling our consciences over any petty considerations of morality. If I can get the Pope, or a local preacher, to bless the Colt .45 ACP I bought to protect my family, can I then fire it indiscriminately? Hey, my intentions are pure, so if I shoot through the door at a prowler and kill someone's kid passing by on the sidewalk, that's OK by Captain King's standards, isn't it? I won't be prosecuted, will I? And people like the Captain will write letters in my defense? Or will it be different somehow because my door isn't located in Iraq?

Finally, let's not trouble ourselves with things like unintended consequences. Let's not consider the fact that what Captain King is saying is, in essence, that we have designed weapons that make it easier to kill people. That it's easier for a politician to get away with ordering the deaths of one, two, or three people at a time, than it is to order the deaths of a hundred, or a hundred-thousand. But since it is easier, aren't these decisions now made more casually? What kind of world would it be if some government, ours, or anyone else's, could target a single individual anywhere in the world with absolute precision, and kill him without injuring another person? Captain King suggests that such precision, alone, leads to a morally improved world. Does it? Is there any man or any government that could be trusted with this kind of power? I don't think so.

No, we have never met. But I read your post on LewRockwell.com, lifted from your blog comments.

By way of professional courtesy, as one attorney to another, I beg to point out a few things based upon what I know from first hand knowledge or from other very reliable sources.

US Army Major General Caldwell, whom you disparaged, is nobody's "yes man." He is an official US Army spokesman, whose job is to speak to the media. He is also a trained Army Ranger (it is, in its own way, as hard a job to be a Ranger as it is to accomplish most of the supremely difficult things in life, IMHO), with a long list of direct action experience under his belt. He is fully aware of the vagaries of "first reports" from combat front lines.

Caldwell's current job involves sifting through whatever comes in, and attempting to present an accurate summary of events to the media, particularly to the "Green Zone" warriors who seldom, if ever, venture outside their gated community. Apropos your comments, there was initial confusion about "the little girl" (whomever she is, and we do not know if she is al-Zarqawi's daughter) who was killed in the bombing of al-Zarqawi's safe-house. Different reports from different people, transmitted from the front lines at about the same time, referred to her as a "female," "woman," "young woman," and "child of indeterminate age." Hence the differing initial reports, which were not "lies" as you so boldly mischaracterized them. Another way of stating it is that the world's news madia can have its news "fast" or it can have it "completely accurate," but not both. Remember that the next time you pick up a newspaper.

The last time I saw General Caldwell, he was riding the Metro in Washington DC---in uniform, with his name tag visible. I asked him why a Major General in his position would be riding the Metro, and he replied that "it is one more way to see what is going on in the world." He also noted to me that "four star generals ought to spend less time in their staff cars, and more time riding the Metro." So you might consider giving the man a break, or at least not call him a "liar" when he is doing his job.

al-Zarqawi's safe house was constructed out of reinforced concrete and steel I-Beams. (Is your house built that way?) Some of the walls were 10 inches thick of poured concrete. This was no tumbledown shack by the railroad track; no little "farm house" in the middle of a date palm orchard. It was no easy "takedown" for any combat team, let alone the relatively small group of special forces that fingered Zarqawi to the specific location at a specific time. "Surround and wait" was not an option under the circumstances. In addition, the occupants must have had some realization that they were found out, because somebody on the inside started shooting at the US forces on the outside. Hence they called for ordnance support, and the "operational fires" commander sent the F-16s overhead.

The F-16s were on a detached air support mission, with no anticipation by the pilots that they were going to be called to bomb al-Zarqawi's house. (One F-16 was in the midst of aerial refueling and had to break off from the airborne tanker to fly to the target area.) Of the two 500-pound bombs dropped in the engagement, the first was laser-designated and the second was GPS-guided. They were both fused to explode after penetrating into the house, as opposed to detonating on first contact with an outside, concrete wall. That al-Zarqawi's body was intact, and that he was alive for some time post-bombing, indicates that he had taken shelter in the basement part of the structure which is where he was found by the Iraqi officers who first entered the place. So the field evidence is that al-Zarqawi apparently knew that something was coming at him (he probably heard the jet noise, which is loud as hell), and took cover. It was not as if al-Zarqawi shielded the little girl with his body, in one last act of supreme and altruistic heroism.

Among other things, you wrote:"One last point inherent in killing the little girl who may or may not have been Zarqawi’s daughter. It is about the question of courage. I suppose one has to expect that a country whose moral reasoning is as screwed up as ours would get the question of courage all wrong too."

I disagree. al-Zarqawi's stock in trade was the indiscriminate bomb, attacking market places, squares, mosques, etc. His end came at the hands of pilots who could, and did, deliberately and accurately place target-appropriate weapons within a few feet of the aim point. As for "screwed up" moral reasoning, believe it or not, many of the people within the US military who were instrumental in developing "precision" weapons over the past 30 years or so were devoutly religious (the late Admiral Arthur Cebrowski comes to mind.) There was a school of thought along the lines of Catholic "Just War" theory inherent in the focus of the respective weapons programs. That is, if war will be waged by the politicians, then it should be conducted in such a manner that will minimize the death and suffering of the innocent. The result was that US conventional weapons are of such accuracy as to make it possible for the policy-makers to pull back from Cold War doctrines involving use of nuclear weapons in war fighting. (another discussion entirely...)

al-Zarqawi chose to lead the self-styled romantic life of a combatant leader, using brutal methods of terrorism to fight an asymmetric war against the U.S. and its coalition allies. In the course of his abbreviated life, al-Zarqawi created for himself a war zone in whatever land he dwelt (Jordan, Afghanistan and eventually Iraq). He was dogmatic, a true believer, a fanatic, a “world-improver” who desired to remake the planet in his own image. al-Zarqawi was, in so many respects, emblematic of Hannah Arendt's depiction of the “banality of evil.”

Whoever was there in the ill-fated house, it was al-Zarqawi who killed them. He knew that he was the subject of a comprehensive manhunt, with a $25 million bounty on his head. He knew that his pursuers were competent, and that any moment could be his last. Yet al-Zarqawi chose to make a call on a certain locale, in the company of others including the women and/or child. When surrounded, someone in al-Zarqawi’s entourage chose to fire on his pursuers in true Bonnie & Clyde fashion, rather than to surrender. al-Zarqawi headed for the basement. And then the bombs fell.

Thus to the very end, al-Zarqawi was a killer. Others died? If so, it was the culmination of a chain of events set in motion entirely by the late and unlamented al Qaeda leader. The death of any innocent is a sad thing, but it was al-Zarqawi’s doing. I am reminded of the words of Herman Melville who wrote the tale of Captain Ahab and his ship the Pequod, which “like Satan, would not sink to Hell till she had dragged a living part of Heaven along with her.”

Dear Captain King:

Thank you for your very fine e-mail. I appreciate it. There are points of great interest in it, including points I agree with. I do have a few responses, however,

1. Given your admitted reliance on “very reliable sources,” I presume someof the information in your letters -- information that is not yet publicly known insofar as I am aware (please correct me if I am mistaken about this) -- was obtained from high Pentagon sources. Why? Did you obtain it to respond to my posting? Were you “officially commissioned” to respond to it, so to speak, or asked to respond to it? This all would be hard to believe, for I do not attribute to myself any such importance. (I was not even able to make Nixon’s enemies list as far as I know.) But why did you feel it necessary to respond, and to include information not publicly known (insofar as I am aware): information such as I-beam reinforcements, walls ten inches thick, where Zarqawi is thought to have been in the house when the bombs struck, the fact that he was not sheltering another person with his body, the implication that others might not have been in the basement since they were dead when we took the house (or the rubble), and the fact that Zarqawi was not one of those who fired the shots. You or your “very reliable sources” are not merely speculating about some or all of these things, or releasing additional incomplete information, in order to avoid or put down some type of feared criticism of what we did, are you?

2. For all the fine, even noble traits you find in General Caldwell, a finding Iwould never quarrel with, the fact is that, even though you say “He is fully aware of the vagaries of ‘first reports’ from combat front lines,” he was reported in the media to have at first flatly denied that a young girl was killed. If the media report was wrong, he, you or the military should say so. If the media report was not wrong, then he flatly denied something he may not have had information about. If he did this, there is a word for such a denial; but I need not repeat the word. Of course, maybe he had been assured by others that there had been no little girl there, so that he simply passed on erroneous information that he had been given and in good faith believed. If that is the case, you, he and/or the military should say so. What is not permissible, and deserves the word I shall not use, is to have flatly denied something that proved true, and to have done so without any subsequent reasonable explanation for the failure of truth.

To say that the news media “can have its news ‘fast’ or it can have it ‘completely accurate’” is wholly beside the point here, and is indeed, an attempt at deflection. The military should not be putting out false statements. If a military spokesman does not know or must refuse to state the facts (as with regard to the location of the persons in the car that drove away), he should say so. What is impermissible, and deeply contrary to the military’s own strictures on honesty of officers, is to tell untruths. It is, of course, extremely sad, and deeply disheartening, that ever since Viet Nam people are prone to disbelieve the military and the government because of the astounding countertradition of untruths that has been built up in opposition to the officer corp’s prior longstanding tradition of truth.

3. It is, I think, perhaps somewhat generous to say merely that it is illogical,and a mere attempt at deflection, to argue that a pilot killing people without serious risk to himself, or a weapons control officer on the ground hundreds or thousands of miles away doing the same, is showing courage because the target was an indiscriminate murderer. The question of courage has nothing to do with whether the target is a Zarqawi or a baby. It has to do, rather, with whether the person firing the weapon is himself or herself at serious risk. I’m confident you must in reality know this.

4. One shakes one’s head at the concept of the devoutly religious developingthe kinds of massively destructive weapons we have today. Not to mention that those who believe in the concept of “just war” might be shaking their heads in wonderment at the point you make, since many of them, I gather, feel that this is not a just war. Not to mention that tens of thousands -- could it conceivably be 100,000 or more, as some say? -- have been killed by our weapons. So much for the humaneness of precision weapons.

5. I’m sorry, Captain, but the fact is that we killed the little girl. Zarqawi’spresence is the reason we killed her, but we, not he, killed her. It is rhetorical sleight of hand, it is a lawyer’s trick (and also a rhetorical trick of right wingers who have written me) to say that he killed her. One could say that he was responsible by his presence for the fact that we killed her, one could also reasonably say, as many have, that it was immoral for him to have put a little girl in danger, but the fact remains that it was we who killed her. I say this even though I am fully aware, as said a few times in my blog, that I would almost surely have made the same decision to bomb the house had it been me on the scene making the decision. And I would have done it to safeguard the Americans on the scene from possible death or wounds. But I am at least cognizant of the truth of who killed the girl and have the honesty to concede it, unlike some of the right wing nuts who have written me crudely ignorant, savage emails cheering on all our destructive efforts and more or less hoping that we kill as many Muslims as possible.

By the way, don’t you think it entirely possible that the insurgents in Iraq are considering how to get back at us by killing Iraqi officials, American officers, and such like. And don’t you think that American intelligence and Iraqi intelligence know this and perhaps have warned those who are potential targets? -- who probably strongly suspect it anyway? If these things are true, and if one or more of the possible targets are killed by insurgent bombs, and if women or children or fellow officials or fellow officers are with them and are also killed in the blast, are you going to say it is the target(s) who killed these other people rather than the insurgents? Are you going to say it was the Iraqi officials or the American officers who killed them? I seriously doubt that you or any other American will say that. Yet that, of course, is exactly what you are saying about Zarqawi. The unhappy fact, which is rebounding against us worldwide, is that we apply wholly different standards of logic depending on whether someone is on our side or the other side. And then we wonder why others consider us vast hypocrites and hate our guts.*

I greatly appreciate your email, even if I might take issue with it. Mendel Rivers, a Congressman from South Carolina was head of the House Armed Services Committee, or one of its subcommittees, in the 1950s and '60s. Mendel Davis succeeded him in Congress. Feel free to correct me if I am mistaken on this.

I have read personal letters from the time when older members of my family were hung in the trees to get other members to disclose the locations of buried valuables by Sherman's men as he went through my state. Some died anyway after the Yankees got what they wanted. Their homes were destroyed while they watched in the dead of winter. I also know that homes, businesses, and churches were burned to the ground where there was no resistance after they were looted by the Yankee solders. There is plenty of evidence to support both claims. Livestock was slaughtered, wells poisoned, farm implements burned, foodstuffs stolen, etc. by Sherman's men. There was no resistance by the civilian population. War was waged upon them as Sherman went through. Civilians were rounded up and killed when Yankee soldiers were killed in the field. Mosby was too successful in Virginia for the Yankee's taste so they killed civilians when Confederate soldiers could not be found. Yes sir, it happened regardless of the omissions in the history books. Also, more Confederates were killed at Elmira-NY, Pt. Lookout-MD, and at a camp near Chicago each than at Andersonville-GA. J. Davis tried to exchange the prisoners in Andersonville before so many died and Grant and Lincoln said they were better off keeping their Confederate prisoners so they would not see them again in the field. Later, Davis even offered to send the Andersonville prisoners home with no strings attached if Lincoln would arrange to transport. He would not since the prisoners needed troops to guard them and took provisions to feed them. Both were scarce in the South by then.

Lee restrained his men. They foraged as they traveled in both South and North and paid for what they took albeit mostly in Confederate money. Civilian properties were respected to a much higher degree as well as women, children, the sick, and the elderly. The men were off fighting since more than 80% of them eventually served in some capacity. This compares to approximately 1/3 of the male population in the American Revolution. I agree the South has been the most "militaristic", patriotic, brave, courageous, or whatever the appropriate term(s) would be. We served in greater numbers on a percentage basis during the Revolution, War of 1812, Mexican, War Between the States, Spanish American, WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Honor and duty means a lot here even if it is misguided at times.

Waging war on civilians was taken to new heights by the North. It is unpleasant for Northerners to admit since they have convinced themselves they have the moral high ground on the war due to the freeing of the slaves which is all Northerners think the war was about. Lincoln never went to war to free the slaves. In his first inaugural address he said there would be no war so long as the taxes were collected. The North went to war to "preserve the union," keep the long term taxes flowing, and to squash the defenders of federalism who would have been economic/political competitors. How would you enforce high tariffs for New England's benefit if the Mississippi allowed the midwest to ignore them?

I notice you did not say anything about the reinterpretation of the Constitution after the North won. Federalism, as defined by the Founding Fathers, died with the war. We are nowhere near what they envisioned as far as limited government and low tax burdens. We should have more in common with the European Union today than simply being one welded together nation. More than 40% of the US economy is taxed or controlled by government at all levels. The Boston Tea Party was over a 3% sales tax on tea. Think about it and how far we have come. We have 700+ military bases in 135+ countries worldwide because our Constitution means virtually nothing anymore. I mean we have not even declared war since WWII and yet we have sent our soldiers home in bags by the thousands with countless more maimed for life.

Concentrating power into fewer hands was the end result of the war. We have a consolidated government with unchecked power. I believe the world would have been better off with America shining the light of limited government that was forever decentralized. We were meant to be a constitutional republic and not a democracy which is mobocracy. If the Constitution had been obeyed, there would have been no secession and no war.

Please give additional info on "the two Mendels, Rivers and Davis". I would like to better understand your thoughts here and be able to research your conclusions further.

Thank you for the email. I am afraid, however, that I largely disagree with you because Sherman and Sheridan, while practicing the “hard hand of war,” did not kill civilians. Killing civilians wholesale was an “innovation” of the 1930s and 1940s, presaged by the Germans’ march through Belgium in 1914. The false view that the North is responsible for this is a long held Southern reactionary view propounded by what since the early 1830s has been far and away the most militaristic portion of the country, with the State of South Carolina being in the forefront of such thinking, viz. the two Mendels, Rivers and Davis.

Thanks for making people think. The killing of civilians and wholesale war on civilians was adopted as a means to an end during Lincoln's war against Southern Independence. Lee ordered his troops to respect the civilian populace. It was Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley and Sherman's march to the sea that epitomized the type of warfare of which you write. Southerners for the most part observed the laws of civilized warfare. The North won, so their ideals won as well for us. The Constitution means nothing anymore because of it. We have collateral damage in its place following an undeclared war of course as in Korea and Vietnam and now Iraq.

I always enjoy reading your comments, probably because they resonant with my own! Keep up the good work.

Regarding the Iraq situation I agree more or less with your analysis as far as it goes. However I've come to believe that these 'tidal events' in human society and history are rarely determined by one or two factors, or personalities, but rather are multi-dimensional and have a complex mixture of determinants. Of course this makes for poor newspaper or talking-head copy where one wants to have a clear cut one or two factor deterministic model. But then the relationship of media to reality is tangential at best, eh?

I think it was Representative Barney Frank (?) who explained the situation with the acronym OIL for O) Oil, I) Israel and L) Location as the explanation for our Iraq adventure. I would also add Greed and Saudi Royal Family, but that I guess might be part of the O and L. One of B. Laden's primary demands and justifications for the 911 attack was to rid the central Holy Land (Islam = Saudi Arabia) of the foreign troops (i.e. American) who were defiling it by their presence.

For the SD Royal family, the problem was they needed the US troops to stay in power, or think they do. So the happy solution was to invade Iraq, loot the Oil, be rid of that trouble maker Saddam, placate the Islamic fundamentalist in SD, put the US troops 'over there' but still in support, not to mention that the defense contractor and industries (Carlyle Group anyone?) would make billions in profits + value added! When 911 happened pappy Bush was sitting in a conference room with other Carlyle Group 'principals', one of whom was a Bin Laden family member, either a brother or cousin of Osama.

Under the sands of Iraq is reported to be 1/3 of ALL the known oil reserves in the world! And this is the GOOD stuff, high quality and easy to extract. Put in a puppet government, get a bunch of sweetheart deals for all the major oil companies, and bring it on!

Judicial Watch reports that in those secret energy policy meetings that Dugout Dick Cheney went all the way to the Supreme Court to prevent the public from knowing about, they had maps of all the Iraqi Oil fields out on the table for discussion. This was within weeks of the 2000 election. Of course they had no idea that something like 9/11 would come along and give them a perfect excuse.

Oh by the way, I've heard that convicted felon Ken Lay was also in those meetings...

This is not to deny the validity of your psychological portrait of Herr Bush and his motivations. I'm sure Prince Bandar and Dugout Dick Cheney were fully aware of that angle and had no problem leading our mentally challenged, Oedipally obsessed, president select astray.

Another factor is the desperate need for the Military Industrial Complex to create a new war hysteria to justify themselves and their obscene profits, post Cold War. The invention of the war on "terror" is brilliant, since it's a war that by definition can never be won, and our actions to combat 'terror' (using terror ourselves) paradoxically will just create more of terrorists. Me thinks Iraq is a terrorist breeder reactor of sorts.

Undoubtedly there are other factors at work but I'm starting to run out of steam.

One last thought, perhaps what is really going on here is that America has become a vassal state of the Saudi Royal Family, and the Bush family are their resident quislings? Or maybe I'm just getting old and paranoid?

Three points that have become widely accepted lead ineluctably to, and suggest the only possible answer or answers to, a fourth one. The fourth one is why, really, did we invade Iraq? What are the real reason or reasons for the invasion?

It has now become widely accepted that, as terrible as 9/11 was, and as big a threat as the then Afghanistan-based Al Qaeda may at that time have presented, George W. Bush did not fully commit American forces to Afghanistan, did not go all out there. Rather, he mainly, not exclusively but mainly, fought that war by use of warlord proxies whom we could in one way or another persuade to do our fighting for us. This is thought by highly knowledgeable persons to have resulted in momentous missed opportunities, like our failure to catch bin Laden when we otherwise could have done so. What is more, Bush did not go all out in Afghanistan in order to write finis to terrorists even though he kept saying that his mission in history was to protect America from terrorists.

The first now-widely-accepted point, then, is that Bush did not fully commit in Afghanistan. And, it should be said, there are those who think the reason for this, or at least a major reason, was that Bush wanted to save the availability of the vast bulk of American forces for a forthcoming war he hoped to fight in Iraq.

The second now-widely-accepted idea is that the reasons given by this administration for a war in Iraq were baloney -- there were no WMDs, Iraqis did not welcome us with rose petals so that the war would be merely a quick walkover, the rest of the Middle East did not fall down on its knees and embrace democracy where there was tyranny, Saddam Hussein was not connected to the terrorists of 9/11.

The third now-widely-accepted idea is that, although there were people warning Bush and company that their announced reasons for going to war in Iraq were hogwash, the administration didn’t want to hear it. It ignored and twisted the intelligence, created and adopted new, phony intelligence that suited its own purposes, and punished those like Shinseki and Lindsay who told disagreeable truths.

Now, one asks oneself: Why would Bush, who announced himself God’s appointed savior of America through destruction of terrorism, nonetheless fail to do anything like the maximum in Afghanistan to catch and destroy terrorists, and then make up stuff, and ignore extensive contrary evidence and intelligence, in order to send about 150,000 men and women to Iraq, which was not connected with terrorism. Why would he and his administration act in this way?

Well, in view of what is now widely accepted, the answer to this question seems pretty simple. It is an answer that has been mentioned in earlier years (as in connection with Paul O’Neill’s book), but that, after some mention, tends to be forgotten. It is that Bush hated and wanted to get rid of Saddam. Saddam, after all, had escaped the clutches of Bush’s father -- whose decision to stop on the road to Baghdad may not look so hot, historically. Then Saddam had tried to kill his father. By taking over Iraq and throwing out and bringing to trial Saddam, Bush would overcome his father’s failure (and surpass his father) and would avenge the attempts on his father’s life. That seems to me the obvious basic reason why Bush did not commit full bore to Afghanistan despite his supposed mission of doing away with terrorists, and instead left the army free to fight in Iraq, made up phony reasons for fighting in Iraq, ignored contrary evidence and, via his henchmen, made up his own phony pseudo-intelligence. Why else but from a deep seated psychological need for revenge against Saddam would even the unintelligent Bush act as stupidly as he did?

Naturally, of course, Bush’s real reason, his underlying reason, could not be put forward to the American people as the reason for going to war (although Bush did slip once and say with regard to Saddam that you have to remember that this is the guy who tried to kill his father).

There very well may be a second underlying reason why Bush got us into the disaster in Iraq. He is an oil man after all, and Iraq sits on top of a mountain of oil that the U.S. could use very well, thank you. This reason is another one that has been mentioned previously but then tends to be passed over in the media, yet it meshes simply and beautifully with the fundamental psychological reason discussed above. For it means that Bush could surpass and avenge his father and better our own oil position. One can see, incidentally, that this combination would make Bush a hero, and plainly anyone who does and says the thing he has done and said (e.g., “Bring it on,” that he answers to a higher father, that God is directing him to do it, etc.) does have a hero complex or messianic complex of some sort. (In truth, unless he has some sort of hero complex or its equivalent, where does a former drunk and serial failure in business come off thinking he should be President?)

These matters are relevant, of course, to the question of what is to be done now, to the question of should we withdraw from Iraq. This question has been addressed here many times before, so one shall not reiterate what has been said previously. Suffice it to add now that the almost ineluctable conclusion that we (wholly unjustifiably) got into the disastrous Iraq war - - in which many tens of thousands have been killed - - in order to salve George Bush’s personal psychological needs makes it all the more right to get out of that war as fast as we can, as fast as blazes. Otherwise we shall continue killing people to soothe George Bush’s psyche.*

After Mr Cockburn's recent comments on "blogging", which have in fact confirmed a feeling I have had about a lot of this "white noise", I do wonder what these folks are doing or thinking when they write (your point well taken). Every once in a while I fire a comment off at some suspicious or specious argument in CP and get locked into an enormously silly debate with people who seem to be "hitmen" for the Right.

I do think that a lot of these "answers" are part of the monitoring of the "netwaves" by the Fouchés of today. No one else takes so much time for sophistry.

Your arguments were pleasantly cogent. May we both be pleased not to have to defend the US occupation within operational modus-- obviating your option to destroy the alleged bunker.But to give you a bit of "bunker" anecdote-- between us: when I first moved to this town some 25 years ago the US consulate was in a noble neighbourhood with normal security conditions-- like any other imperial consulate. Now it is located directly next to the central rail station. The whole area is filled with vile security barriers and the taxis are no longer placed conveniently for the rail passengers. This is to "protect" a consulate that does not even need to be located at such a vulnerable traffic junction. Is the US not endangering all the rail traffic through Dusseldorf by this choice of location?

The US government also tried to pressure the Berlin government to divert all the traffic in the city centre so that it could build its embassy on the old pre-war site. As far as I know this has been resisted-- primarily because Berlin has no money for such an extravagance and the US never pays for such things.

In short, although I do not really want a full citation on your site, it may be a further support for your argument (not that the Right cares) to say that throughout the world the US puts innocent people in harm's way and accepts no responsibility for this. Were the myopic JAG officer who wrote you to take that into account-- maybe even reading a bit of British colonial history-- he could under conditions of sobriety or Stockholm syndrome imagine a proper revulsion at hostage taking-- the basic principle guiding the American way of waging war.

Kindly,

tpw

Am 19.06.2006 um 20:59 schrieb

Dean Lawrence R. Velvel:

June 19, 2006

Re: E-Mail Correspondence With Captain Byron King Of The United States Navy Reserve.

From: Dean Lawrence R. VelvelVelvelOnNationalAffairs.com

Dear Colleagues:

Appended below is a most interesting email from Captain Byron King, USNR, and a response to his comments.

No, we have never met. But I read your post on LewRockwell.com, lifted from your blog comments.

By way of professional courtesy, as one attorney to another, I beg to point out a few things based upon what I know from first hand knowledge or from other very reliable sources.

US Army Major General Caldwell, whom you disparaged, is nobody's "yes man." He is an official US Army spokesman, whose job is to speak to the media. He is also a trained Army Ranger (it is, in its own way, as hard a job to be a Ranger as it is to accomplish most of the supremely difficult things in life, IMHO), with a long list of direct action experience under his belt. He is fully aware of the vagaries of "first reports" from combat front lines.

Caldwell's current job involves sifting through whatever comes in, and attempting to present an accurate summary of events to the media, particularly to the "Green Zone" warriors who seldom, if ever, venture outside their gated community. Apropos your comments, there was initial confusion about "the little girl" (whomever she is, and we do not know if she is al-Zarqawi's daughter) who was killed in the bombing of al-Zarqawi's safe-house. Different reports from different people, transmitted from the front lines at about the same time, referred to her as a "female," "woman," "young woman," and "child of indeterminate age." Hence the differing initial reports, which were not "lies" as you so boldly mischaracterized them.

Another way of stating it is that the world's news madia can have its news "fast" or it can have it "completely accurate," but not both. Remember that the next time you pick up a newspaper.

The last time I saw General Caldwell, he was riding the Metro in Washington DC---in uniform, with his name tag visible. I asked him why a Major General in his position would be riding the Metro, and he replied that "it is one more way to see what is going on in the world." He also noted to me that "four star generals ought to spend less time in their staff cars, and more time riding the Metro." So you might consider giving the man a break, or at least not call him a "liar" when he is doing his job.

al-Zarqawi's safe house was constructed out of reinforced concrete and steel I-Beams. (Is your house built that way?) Some of the walls were 10 inches thick of poured concrete. This was no tumbledown shack by the railroad track; no little "farm house" in the middle of a date palm orchard. It was no easy "takedown" for any combat team, let alone the relatively small group of special forces that fingered Zarqawi to the specific location at a specific time. "Surround and wait" was not an option under the circumstances. In addition, the occupants must have had some realization that they were found out, because somebody on the inside started shooting at the US forces on the outside. Hence they called for ordnance support, and the "operational fires" commander sent the F-16s overhead.

The F-16s were on a detached air support mission, with no anticipation by the pilots that they were going to be called to bomb al-Zarqawi's house. (One F-16 was in the midst of aerial refueling and had to break off from the airborne tanker to fly to the target area.) Of the two 500-pound bombs dropped in the engagement, the first was laser-designated and the second was GPS-guided. They were both fused to explode after penetrating into the house, as opposed to detonating on first contact with an outside, concrete wall. That al-Zarqawi's body was intact, and that he was alive for some time post-bombing, indicates that he had taken shelter in the basement part of the structure which is where he was found by the Iraqi officers who first entered the place. So the field evidence is that al-Zarqawi apparently knew that something was coming at him (he probably heard the jet noise, which is loud as hell), and took cover. It was not as if al-Zarqawi shielded the little girl with his body, in one last act of supreme and altruistic heroism.

Among other things, you wrote:"One last point inherent in killing the little girl who may or may not have been Zarqawi’s daughter. It is about the question of courage. I suppose one has to expect that a country whose moral reasoning is as screwed up as ours would get the question of courage all wrong too."

I disagree. al-Zarqawi's stock in trade was the indiscriminate bomb, attacking market places, squares, mosques, etc. His end came at the hands of pilots who could, and did, deliberately and accurately place target-appropriate weapons within a few feet of the aim point.

As for "screwed up" moral reasoning, believe it or not, many of the people within the US military who were instrumental in developing "precision" weapons over the past 30 years or so were devoutly religious (the late Admiral Arthur Cebrowski comes to mind.) There was a school of thought along the lines of Catholic "Just War" theory inherent in the focus of the respective weapons programs. That is, if war will be waged by the politicians, then it should be conducted in such a manner that will minimize the death and suffering of the innocent. The result was that US conventional weapons are of such accuracy as to make it possible for the policy-makers to pull back from Cold War doctrines involving use of nuclear weapons in war fighting. (another discussion entirely...)

al-Zarqawi chose to lead the self-styled romantic life of a combatant leader, using brutal methods of terrorism to fight an asymmetric war against the U.S. and its coalition allies. In the course of his abbreviated life, al-Zarqawi created for himself a war zone in whatever land he dwelt (Jordan, Afghanistan and eventually Iraq). He was dogmatic, a true believer, a fanatic, a “world-improver” who desired to remake the planet in his own image. al-Zarqawi was, in so many respects, emblematic of Hannah Arendt's depiction of the “banality of evil.”

Whoever was there in the ill-fated house, it was al-Zarqawi who killed them. He knew that he was the subject of a comprehensive manhunt, with a $25 million bounty on his head. He knew that his pursuers were competent, and that any moment could be his last. Yet al-Zarqawi chose to make a call on a certain locale, in the company of others including the women and/or child. When surrounded, someone in al-Zarqawi’s entourage chose to fire on his pursuers in true Bonnie & Clyde fashion, rather than to surrender. al-Zarqawi headed for the basement. And then the bombs fell.

Thus to the very end, al-Zarqawi was a killer. Others died? If so, it was the culmination of a chain of events set in motion entirely by the late and unlamented al Qaeda leader. The death of any innocent is a sad thing, but it was al-Zarqawi’s doing. I am reminded of the words of Herman Melville who wrote the tale of Captain Ahab and his ship the Pequod, which “like Satan, would not sink to Hell till she had dragged a living part of Heaven along with her.”

Dear Captain King:

Thank you for your very fine e-mail. I appreciate it. There are points of great interest in it, including points I agree with. I do have a few responses, however,

1. Given your admitted reliance on “very reliable sources,” I presume someof the information in your letters -- information that is not yet publicly known insofar as I am aware (please correct me if I am mistaken about this) -- was obtained from high Pentagon sources. Why? Did you obtain it to respond to my posting? Were you “officially commissioned” to respond to it, so to speak, or asked to respond to it? This all would be hard to believe, for I do not attribute to myself any such importance. (I was not even able to make Nixon’s enemies list as far as I know.) But whydid you feel it necessary to respond, and to include information not publicly known (insofar as I am aware): information such as I-beam reinforcements, walls ten inches thick, where Zarqawi is thought to have been in the house when the bombs struck, the fact that he was not sheltering another person with his body, the implication that others might not have been in the basement since they were dead when we took the house (or the rubble), and the fact that Zarqawi was not one of those who fired the shots. You or your “very reliable sources” are not merely speculating about some or all of these things, or releasing additional incomplete information, in order to avoid or put down some type of feared criticism of what we did, are you?

2. For all the fine, even noble traits you find in General Caldwell, a finding Iwould never quarrel with, the fact is that, even though you say “He is fully aware of the vagaries of ‘first reports’ from combat front lines,” he was reported in the media to have at first flatly denied that a young girl was killed. If the media report was wrong, he, you or the military should say so. If the media report was not wrong, then he flatly denied something he may not have had information about. If he did this, there is a word for such a denial; but I need not repeat the word. Of course, maybe he had been assured by others that there had been no little girl there, so that he simply passed on erroneous information that he had been given and in good faith believed. If that is the case, you, he and/or the military should say so. What is not permissible, and deserves the word I shall not use, is to have flatly denied something that proved true, and to have done so without any subsequent reasonable explanation for the failure of truth.

To say that the news media “can have its news ‘fast’ or it can have it ‘completely accurate’” is wholly beside the point here, and is indeed, an attempt at deflection. The military should not be putting out false statements. If a military spokesman does not know or must refuse to state the facts (as with regard to the location of the persons in the car that drove away), he should say so. What is impermissible, and deeply contrary to the military’s own strictures on honesty of officers, is to tell untruths. It is, of course, extremely sad, and deeply disheartening, that ever since Viet Nam people are prone to disbelieve the military and the government because of the astounding countertradition of untruths that has been built up in opposition to the officer corp’s prior longstanding tradition of truth.

3. It is, I think, perhaps somewhat generous to say merely that it is illogical,and a mere attempt at deflection, to argue that a pilot killing people without serious risk to himself, or a weapons control officer on the ground hundreds or thousands of miles away doing the same, is showing courage because the target was an indiscriminate murderer. The question of courage has nothing to do with whether the target is a Zarqawi or a baby. It has to do, rather, with whether the person firing the weapon is himself or herself at serious risk. I’m confident you must in reality know this.

4. One shakes one’s head at the concept of the devoutly religious developingthe kinds of massively destructive weapons we have today. Not to mention that those who believe in the concept of “just war” might be shaking their heads in wonderment at the point you make, since many of them, I gather, feel that this is not a just war. Not to mention that tens of thousands -- could it conceivably be 100,000 or more, as some say? -- have been killed by our weapons. So much for the humaneness of precision weapons.

5. I’m sorry, Captain, but the fact is that we killed the little girl. Zarqawi’spresence is the reason we killed her, but we, not he, killed her. It is rhetorical sleight of hand, it is a lawyer’s trick (and also a rhetorical trick of right wingers who have written me) to say that he killed her. One could say that he was responsible by hispresence for the fact that we killed her, one could also reasonably say, as many have, that it was immoral for him to have put a little girl in danger, but the fact remains that it was we who killed her. I say this even though I am fully aware, as said a few times in my blog, that I would almost surely have made the same decision to bomb the house had it been me on the scene making the decision. And I would have done it to safeguard the Americans on the scene from possible death or wounds. But I am at least cognizant of the truth of who killed the girl and have the honesty to concede it, unlike some of the right wing nuts who have written me crudely ignorant, savage emails cheering on all our destructive efforts and more or less hoping that we kill as many Muslims as possible.

By the way, don’t you think it entirely possible that the insurgents in Iraq are considering how to get back at us by killing Iraqi officials, American officers, and such like. And don’t you think that American intelligence and Iraqi intelligence know this and perhaps have warned those who are potential targets? -- who probably strongly suspect it anyway? If these things are true, and if one or more of the possible targets are killed by insurgent bombs, and if women or children or fellow officials or fellow officers are with them and are also killed in the blast, are you going to say it is the target(s) who killed these other people rather than the insurgents? Are you going to say it was the Iraqi officials or the American officers who killed them? I seriously doubt that you or any other American will say that. Yet that, of course, is exactly what you are saying about Zarqawi. The unhappy fact, which is rebounding against us worldwide, is that we apply wholly different standards of logic depending on whether someone is on our side or the other side. And then we wonder why others consider us vast hypocrites and hate our guts.*

It's really quite like a Monty Python sketch.We dropped bombs on those people and killed them.No we didn't.Of course we did, it was our planes that dropped those bombs.It was that guy in the house that did it.What?Yes, he dropped the bombs.How did he do that?By being "in" the house.You haven't explained how he dropped the bombs.Yes I have.What about our planes?'What about them?Our planes dropped the bombs.No they didn't. He called the bombs down upon himself.What?

ad nauseum

Steve

Lawrence R. Velvel" wrote:

June 19, 2006

Re: E-Mail Correspondence With Captain Byron King Of The United States Navy Reserve.

From: Dean Lawrence R. VelvelVelvelOnNationalAffairs.com

Dear Colleagues:

Appended below is a most interesting email from Captain Byron King, USNR, and a response to his comments.

No, we have never met. But I read your post on LewRockwell.com, lifted from your blog comments.

By way of professional courtesy, as one attorney to another, I beg to point out a few things based upon what I know from first hand knowledge or from other very reliable sources.

US Army Major General Caldwell, whom you disparaged, is nobody's "yes man." He is an official US Army spokesman, whose job is to speak to the media. He is also a trained Army Ranger (it is, in its own way, as hard a job to be a Ranger as it is to accomplish most of the supremely difficult things in life, IMHO), with a long list of direct action experience under his belt. He is fully aware of the vagaries of "first reports" from combat front lines.

Caldwell's current job involves sifting through whatever comes in, and attempting to present an accurate summary of events to the media, particularly to the "Green Zone" warriors who seldom, if ever, venture outside their gated community. Apropos your comments, there was initial confusion about "the little girl" (whomever she is, and we do not know if she is al-Zarqawi's daughter) who was killed in the bombing of al-Zarqawi's safe-house. Different reports from different people, transmitted from the front lines at about the same time, referred to her as a "female," "woman," "young woman," and "child of indeterminate age." Hence the differing initial reports, which were not "lies" as you so boldly mischaracterized them.

Another way of stating it is that the world's news madia can have its news "fast" or it can have it "completely accurate," but not both. Remember that the next time you pick up a newspaper.

The last time I saw General Caldwell, he was riding the Metro in Washington DC---in uniform, with his name tag visible. I asked him why a Major General in his position would be riding the Metro, and he replied that "it is one more way to see what is going on in the world." He also noted to me that "four star generals ought to spend less time in their staff cars, and more time riding the Metro." So you might consider giving the man a break, or at least not call him a "liar" when he is doing his job.

al-Zarqawi's safe house was constructed out of reinforced concrete and steel I-Beams. (Is your house built that way?) Some of the walls were 10 inches thick of poured concrete. This was no tumbledown shack by the railroad track; no little "farm house" in the middle of a date palm orchard. It was no easy "takedown" for any combat team, let alone the relatively small group of special forces that fingered Zarqawi to the specific location at a specific time. "Surround and wait" was not an option under the circumstances. In addition, the occupants must have had some realization that they were found out, because somebody on the inside started shooting at the US forces on the outside. Hence they called for ordnance support, and the "operational fires" commander sent the F-16s overhead.

The F-16s were on a detached air support mission, with no anticipation by the pilots that they were going to be called to bomb al-Zarqawi's house. (One F-16 was in the midst of aerial refueling and had to break off from the airborne tanker to fly to the target area.) Of the two 500-pound bombs dropped in the engagement, the first was laser-designated and the second was GPS-guided. They were both fused to explode after penetrating into the house, as opposed to detonating on first contact with an outside, concrete wall. That al-Zarqawi's body was intact, and that he was alive for some time post-bombing, indicates that he had taken shelter in the basement part of the structure which is where he was found by the Iraqi officers who first entered the place. So the field evidence is that al-Zarqawi apparently knew that something was coming at him (he probably heard the jet noise, which is loud as hell), and took cover. It was not as if al-Zarqawi shielded the little girl with his body, in one last act of supreme and altruistic heroism.

Among other things, you wrote:"One last point inherent in killing the little girl who may or may not have been Zarqawi’s daughter. It is about the question of courage. I suppose one has to expect that a country whose moral reasoning is as screwed up as ours would get the question of courage all wrong too."

I disagree. al-Zarqawi's stock in trade was the indiscriminate bomb, attacking market places, squares, mosques, etc. His end came at the hands of pilots who could, and did, deliberately and accurately place target-appropriate weapons within a few feet of the aim point.

As for "screwed up" moral reasoning, believe it or not, many of the people within the US military who were instrumental in developing "precision" weapons over the past 30 years or so were devoutly religious (the late Admiral Arthur Cebrowski comes to mind.) There was a school of thought along the lines of Catholic "Just War" theory inherent in the focus of the respective weapons programs. That is, if war will be waged by the politicians, then it should be conducted in such a manner that will minimize the death and suffering of the innocent. The result was that US conventional weapons are of such accuracy as to make it possible for the policy-makers to pull back from Cold War doctrines involving use of nuclear weapons in war fighting. (another discussion entirely...)

al-Zarqawi chose to lead the self-styled romantic life of a combatant leader, using brutal methods of terrorism to fight an asymmetric war against the U.S. and its coalition allies. In the course of his abbreviated life, al-Zarqawi created for himself a war zone in whatever land he dwelt (Jordan, Afghanistan and eventually Iraq). He was dogmatic, a true believer, a fanatic, a “world-improver” who desired to remake the planet in his own image. al-Zarqawi was, in so many respects, emblematic of Hannah Arendt's depiction of the “banality of evil.”

Whoever was there in the ill-fated house, it was al-Zarqawi who killed them. He knew that he was the subject of a comprehensive manhunt, with a $25 million bounty on his head. He knew that his pursuers were competent, and that any moment could be his last. Yet al-Zarqawi chose to make a call on a certain locale, in the company of others including the women and/or child. When surrounded, someone in al-Zarqawi’s entourage chose to fire on his pursuers in true Bonnie & Clyde fashion, rather than to surrender. al-Zarqawi headed for the basement. And then the bombs fell.

Thus to the very end, al-Zarqawi was a killer. Others died? If so, it was the culmination of a chain of events set in motion entirely by the late and unlamented al Qaeda leader. The death of any innocent is a sad thing, but it was al-Zarqawi’s doing. I am reminded of the words of Herman Melville who wrote the tale of Captain Ahab and his ship the Pequod, which “like Satan, would not sink to Hell till she had dragged a living part of Heaven along with her.”

Dear Captain King:

Thank you for your very fine e-mail. I appreciate it. There are points of great interest in it, including points I agree with. I do have a few responses, however,

1. Given your admitted reliance on “very reliable sources,” I presume someof the information in your letters -- information that is not yet publicly known insofar as I am aware (please correct me if I am mistaken about this) -- was obtained from high Pentagon sources. Why? Did you obtain it to respond to my posting? Were you “officially commissioned” to respond to it, so to speak, or asked to respond to it? This all would be hard to believe, for I do not attribute to myself any such importance. (I was not even able to make Nixon’s enemies list as far as I know.) But why did you feel it necessary to respond, and to include information not publicly known (insofar as I am aware): information such as I-beam reinforcements, walls ten inches thick, where Zarqawi is thought to have been in the house when the bombs struck, the fact that he was not sheltering another person with his body, the implication that others might not have been in the basement since they were dead when we took the house (or the rubble), and the fact that Zarqawi was not one of those who fired the shots. You or your “very reliable sources” are not merely speculating about some or all of these things, or releasing additional incomplete information, in order to avoid or put down some type of feared criticism of what we did, are you?

2. For all the fine, even noble traits you find in General Caldwell, a finding Iwould never quarrel with, the fact is that, even though you say “He is fully aware of the vagaries of ‘first reports’ from combat front lines,” he was reported in the media to have at first flatly denied that a young girl was killed. If the media report was wrong, he, you or the military should say so. If the media report was not wrong, then he flatly denied something he may not have had information about. If he did this, there is a word for such a denial; but I need not repeat the word. Of course, maybe he had been assured by others that there had been no little girl there, so that he simply passed on erroneous information that he had been given and in good faith believed. If that is the case, you, he and/or the military should say so. What is not permissible, and deserves the word I shall not use, is to have flatly denied something that proved true, and to have done so without any subsequent reasonable explanation for the failure of truth.

To say that the news media “can have its news ‘fast’ or it can have it ‘completely accurate’” is wholly beside the point here, and is indeed, an attempt at deflection. The military should not be putting out false statements. If a military spokesman does not know or must refuse to state the facts (as with regard to the location of the persons in the car that drove away), he should say so. What is impermissible, and deeply contrary to the military’s own strictures on honesty of officers, is to tell untruths. It is, of course, extremely sad, and deeply disheartening, that ever since Viet Nam people are prone to disbelieve the military and the government because of the astounding countertradition of untruths that has been built up in opposition to the officer corp’s prior longstanding tradition of truth.

3. It is, I think, perhaps somewhat generous to say merely that it is illogical,and a mere attempt at deflection, to argue that a pilot killing people without serious risk to himself, or a weapons control officer on the ground hundreds or thousands of miles away doing the same, is showing courage because the target was an indiscriminate murderer. The question of courage has nothing to do with whether the target is a Zarqawi or a baby. It has to do, rather, with whether the person firing the weapon is himself or herself at serious risk. I’m confident you must in reality know this.

4. One shakes one’s head at the concept of the devoutly religious developingthe kinds of massively destructive weapons we have today. Not to mention that those who believe in the concept of “just war” might be shaking their heads in wonderment at the point you make, since many of them, I gather, feel that this is not a just war. Not to mention that tens of thousands -- could it conceivably be 100,000 or more, as some say? -- have been killed by our weapons. So much for the humaneness of precision weapons.

5. I’m sorry, Captain, but the fact is that we killed the little girl. Zarqawi’spresence is the reason we killed her, but we, not he, killed her. It is rhetorical sleight of hand, it is a lawyer’s trick (and also a rhetorical trick of right wingers who have written me) to say that he killed her. One could say that he was responsible by his presence for the fact that we killed her, one could also reasonably say, as many have, that it was immoral for him to have put a little girl in danger, but the fact remains that it was we who killed her. I say this even though I am fully aware, as said a few times in my blog, that I would almost surely have made the same decision to bomb the house had it been me on the scene making the decision. And I would have done it to safeguard the Americans on the scene from possible death or wounds. But I am at least cognizant of the truth of who killed the girl and have the honesty to concede it, unlike some of the right wing nuts who have written me crudely ignorant, savage emails cheering on all our destructive efforts and more or less hoping that we kill as many Muslims as possible.

By the way, don’t you think it entirely possible that the insurgents in Iraq are considering how to get back at us by killing Iraqi officials, American officers, and such like. And don’t you think that American intelligence and Iraqi intelligence know this and perhaps have warned those who are potential targets? -- who probably strongly suspect it anyway? If these things are true, and if one or more of the possible targets are killed by insurgent bombs, and if women or children or fellow officials or fellow officers are with them and are also killed in the blast, are you going to say it is the target(s) who killed these other people rather than the insurgents? Are you going to say it was the Iraqi officials or the American officers who killed them? I seriously doubt that you or any other American will say that. Yet that, of course, is exactly what you are saying about Zarqawi. The unhappy fact, which is rebounding against us worldwide, is that we apply wholly different standards of logic depending on whether someone is on our side or the other side. And then we wonder why others consider us vast hypocrites and hate our guts.*

> Correspondence With Captain Byron King Of The United States Navy Reserve.>> Dear Dean Lawrence R. Velvel:>> An American bomber killed one little girl. Here we have one example of thousands and thousands of children killed in war. When we decide to go to war we decide to kill children. Name the exception to this statement.>> Argue how many angels are on the head of a pin, but do not go to war. Argue economics, but do not go to war. Argue about your gods, but do not go to war. Talk and talk until you can change your own heart and mind when understanding your enemy, but do not go to war. Talk and talk until your enemy can change his heart and mind when understanding you, but do not go to war.>> Talk about the courage it takes to face your enemies to seek peace. Seek the courageous enemy that will face you to seek peace.>> Creation takes nine months, much pain and courage. Destruction takes an eye blink.>> Gentlemen, we do need to stop the killing now.>>> Cordially,>> L. Bruens

Amazing, and thank you for responding to Captain Byron King. Also, I would like to add, when we kill someone, we get very happy and excited, but if the '"enemies" kill some of us (Americans) and are happy and excited, we DO NOT like it??

No, we have never met. But I read your post on LewRockwell.com, lifted from your blog comments.

By way of professional courtesy, as one attorney to another, I beg to point out a few things based upon what I know from first hand knowledge or from other very reliable sources.

US Army Major General Caldwell, whom you disparaged, is nobody's "yes man." He is an official US Army spokesman, whose job is to speak to the media. He is also a trained Army Ranger (it is, in its own way, as hard a job to be a Ranger as it is to accomplish most of the supremely difficult things in life, IMHO), with a long list of direct action experience under his belt. He is fully aware of the vagaries of "first reports" from combat front lines.

Caldwell's current job involves sifting through whatever comes in, and attempting to present an accurate summary of events to the media, particularly to the "Green Zone" warriors who seldom, if ever, venture outside their gated community. Apropos your comments, there was initial confusion about "the little girl" (whomever she is, and we do not know if she is al-Zarqawi's daughter) who was killed in the bombing of al-Zarqawi's safe-house. Different reports from different people, transmitted from the front lines at about the same time, referred to her as a "female," "woman," "young woman," and "child of indeterminate age." Hence the differing initial reports, which were not "lies" as you so boldly mischaracterized them.

Another way of stating it is that the world's news madia can have its news "fast" or it can have it "completely accurate," but not both. Remember that the next time you pick up a newspaper.

The last time I saw General Caldwell, he was riding the Metro in Washington DC---in uniform, with his name tag visible. I asked him why a Major General in his position would be riding the Metro, and he replied that "it is one more way to see what is going on in the world." He also noted to me that "four star generals ought to spend less time in their staff cars, and more time riding the Metro." So you might consider giving the man a break, or at least not call him a "liar" when he is doing his job.

al-Zarqawi's safe house was constructed out of reinforced concrete and steel I-Beams. (Is your house built that way?) Some of the walls were 10 inches thick of poured concrete. This was no tumbledown shack by the railroad track; no little "farm house" in the middle of a date palm orchard. It was no easy "takedown" for any combat team, let alone the relatively small group of special forces that fingered Zarqawi to the specific location at a specific time. "Surround and wait" was not an option under the circumstances. In addition, the occupants must have had some realization that they were found out, because somebody on the inside started shooting at the US forces on the outside. Hence they called for ordnance support, and the "operational fires" commander sent the F-16s overhead.

The F-16s were on a detached air support mission, with no anticipation by the pilots that they were going to be called to bomb al-Zarqawi's house. (One F-16 was in the midst of aerial refueling and had to break off from the airborne tanker to fly to the target area.) Of the two 500-pound bombs dropped in the engagement, the first was laser-designated and the second was GPS-guided. They were both fused to explode after penetrating into the house, as opposed to detonating on first contact with an outside, concrete wall. That al-Zarqawi's body was intact, and that he was alive for some time post-bombing, indicates that he had taken shelter in the basement part of the structure which is where he was found by the Iraqi officers who first entered the place. So the field evidence is that al-Zarqawi apparently knew that something was coming at him (he probably heard the jet noise, which is loud as hell), and took cover. It was not as if al-Zarqawi shielded the little girl with his body, in one last act of supreme and altruistic heroism.

Among other things, you wrote:

"One last point inherent in killing the little girl who may or may not have been Zarqawi’s daughter. It is about the question of courage. I suppose one has to expect that a country whose moral reasoning is as screwed up as ours would get the question of courage all wrong too."

I disagree. al-Zarqawi's stock in trade was the indiscriminate bomb, attacking market places, squares, mosques, etc. His end came at the hands of pilots who could, and did, deliberately and accurately place target-appropriate weapons within a few feet of the aim point.

As for "screwed up" moral reasoning, believe it or not, many of the people within the US military who were instrumental in developing "precision" weapons over the past 30 years or so were devoutly religious (the late Admiral Arthur Cebrowski comes to mind.) There was a school of thought along the lines of Catholic "Just War" theory inherent in the focus of the respective weapons programs. That is, if war will be waged by the politicians, then it should be conducted in such a manner that will minimize the death and suffering of the innocent. The result was that US conventional weapons are of such accuracy as to make it possible for the policy-makers to pull back from Cold War doctrines involving use of nuclear weapons in war fighting. (another discussion entirely...)

al-Zarqawi chose to lead the self-styled romantic life of a combatant leader, using brutal methods of terrorism to fight an asymmetric war against the U.S. and its coalition allies. In the course of his abbreviated life, al-Zarqawi created for himself a war zone in whatever land he dwelt (Jordan, Afghanistan and eventually Iraq). He was dogmatic, a true believer, a fanatic, a “world-improver” who desired to remake the planet in his own image. al-Zarqawi was, in so many respects, emblematic of Hannah Arendt's depiction of the “banality of evil.”

Whoever was there in the ill-fated house, it was al-Zarqawi who killed them. He knew that he was the subject of a comprehensive manhunt, with a $25 million bounty on his head. He knew that his pursuers were competent, and that any moment could be his last. Yet al-Zarqawi chose to make a call on a certain locale, in the company of others including the women and/or child. When surrounded, someone in al-Zarqawi’s entourage chose to fire on his pursuers in true Bonnie & Clyde fashion, rather than to surrender. al-Zarqawi headed for the basement. And then the bombs fell.

Thus to the very end, al-Zarqawi was a killer. Others died? If so, it was the culmination of a chain of events set in motion entirely by the late and unlamented al Qaeda leader. The death of any innocent is a sad thing, but it was al-Zarqawi’s doing. I am reminded of the words of Herman Melville who wrote the tale of Captain Ahab and his ship the Pequod, which “like Satan, would not sink to Hell till she had dragged a living part of Heaven along with her.”

Dear Captain King:

Thank you for your very fine e-mail. I appreciate it. There are points of great interest in it, including points I agree with. I do have a few responses, however,

1. Given your admitted reliance on “very reliable sources,” I presume someof the information in your letters -- information that is not yet publicly known insofar as I am aware (please correct me if I am mistaken about this) -- was obtained from high Pentagon sources. Why? Did you obtain it to respond to my posting? Were you “officially commissioned” to respond to it, so to speak, or asked to respond to it? This all would be hard to believe, for I do not attribute to myself any such importance. (I was not even able to make Nixon’s enemies list as far as I know.) But why did you feel it necessary to respond, and to include information not publicly known (insofar as I am aware): information such as I-beam reinforcements, walls ten inches thick, where Zarqawi is thought to have been in the house when the bombs struck, the fact that he was not sheltering another person with his body, the implication that others might not have been in the basement since they were dead when we took the house (or the rubble), and the fact that Zarqawi was not one of those who fired the shots. You or your “very reliable sources” are not merely speculating about some or all of these things, or releasing additional incomplete information, in order to avoid or put down some type of feared criticism of what we did, are you?

2. For all the fine, even noble traits you find in General Caldwell, a finding Iwould never quarrel with, the fact is that, even though you say “He is fully aware of the vagaries of ‘first reports’ from combat front lines,” he was reported in the media to have at first flatly denied that a young girl was killed. If the media report was wrong, he, you or the military should say so. If the media report was not wrong, then he flatly denied something he may not have had information about. If he did this, there is a word for such a denial; but I need not repeat the word. Of course, maybe he had been assured by others that there had been no little girl there, so that he simply passed on erroneous information that he had been given and in good faith believed. If that is the case, you, he and/or the military should say so. What is not permissible, and deserves the word I shall not use, is to have flatly denied something that proved true, and to have done so without any subsequent reasonable explanation for the failure of truth.

To say that the news media “can have its news ‘fast’ or it can have it ‘completely accurate’” is wholly beside the point here, and is indeed, an attempt at deflection. The military should not be putting out false statements. If a military spokesman does not know or must refuse to state the facts (as with regard to the location of the persons in the car that drove away), he should say so. What is impermissible, and deeply contrary to the military’s own strictures on honesty of officers, is to tell untruths. It is, of course, extremely sad, and deeply disheartening, that ever since Viet Nam people are prone to disbelieve the military and the government because of the astounding countertradition of untruths that has been built up in opposition to the officer corp’s prior longstanding tradition of truth.

3. It is, I think, perhaps somewhat generous to say merely that it is illogical,and a mere attempt at deflection, to argue that a pilot killing people without serious risk to himself, or a weapons control officer on the ground hundreds or thousands of miles away doing the same, is showing courage because the target was an indiscriminate murderer. The question of courage has nothing to do with whether the target is a Zarqawi or a baby. It has to do, rather, with whether the person firing the weapon is himself or herself at serious risk. I’m confident you must in reality know this.

4. One shakes one’s head at the concept of the devoutly religious developingthe kinds of massively destructive weapons we have today. Not to mention that those who believe in the concept of “just war” might be shaking their heads in wonderment at the point you make, since many of them, I gather, feel that this is not a just war. Not to mention that tens of thousands -- could it conceivably be 100,000 or more, as some say? -- have been killed by our weapons. So much for the humaneness of precision weapons.

5. I’m sorry, Captain, but the fact is that we killed the little girl. Zarqawi’spresence is the reason we killed her, but we, not he, killed her. It is rhetorical sleight of hand, it is a lawyer’s trick (and also a rhetorical trick of right wingers who have written me) to say that he killed her. One could say that he was responsible by his presence for the fact that we killed her, one could also reasonably say, as many have, that it was immoral for him to have put a little girl in danger, but the fact remains that it was we who killed her. I say this even though I am fully aware, as said a few times in my blog, that I would almost surely have made the same decision to bomb the house had it been me on the scene making the decision. And I would have done it to safeguard the Americans on the scene from possible death or wounds. But I am at least cognizant of the truth of who killed the girl and have the honesty to concede it, unlike some of the right wing nuts who have written me crudely ignorant, savage emails cheering on all our destructive efforts and more or less hoping that we kill as many Muslims as possible.

By the way, don’t you think it entirely possible that the insurgents in Iraq are considering how to get back at us by killing Iraqi officials, American officers, and such like. And don’t you think that American intelligence and Iraqi intelligence know this and perhaps have warned those who are potential targets? -- who probably strongly suspect it anyway? If these things are true, and if one or more of the possible targets are killed by insurgent bombs, and if women or children or fellow officials or fellow officers are with them and are also killed in the blast, are you going to say it is the target(s) who killed these other people rather than the insurgents? Are you going to say it was the Iraqi officials or the American officers who killed them? I seriously doubt that you or any other American will say that. Yet that, of course, is exactly what you are saying about Zarqawi. The unhappy fact, which is rebounding against us worldwide, is that we apply wholly different standards of logic depending on whether someone is on our side or the other side. And then we wonder why others consider us vast hypocrites and hate our guts.*

Isn't a good born-again Christian not supposed to hate? That's another thought. After reading Kevin Phillip's I think it might have more to do with oil along with hatred for Saddam, belief in "End Tmes," and just plain politics. Phillip's says that Iraq has vast oil reserves not yet found, let alone tapped. Very little of Iraq has been explored. Also, Iraq has not pumped much out of its own oil fields...I think he said some like only 13%. I was one who did not believe that oil was the reason for going into Iraq. Now I am not certain.

Don

----- Original Message -----

From: "Marion McCoskey" To: Sent: Wednesday, June 21, 2006 1:59 AMSubject: E-Mail Correspondence With Captain Byron King of the United States Navy Reserve

> << > I would almost surely have made the same decision to bomb the house had> it been me on the scene making the decision.> >>>> In that case there is very little difference between you and the people> you are arguing with. Shame on you all.>> Marion McCoskey> http://www.mcky.net>

*If you wish to respond to this email/blog, please email your response to me at velvel@mslaw.edu. Your response may be posted on the blog if you have no objection; please tell me if you do object.

About Dean Velvel

Name:Lawrence
Velvel

Location:Andover, Massachusetts,
United States

Dean Velvel, an honors graduate of
the University of Michigan Law School, has practiced law in the public and private sectors,
and been a law professor. He is the author of the quartet Thine Alabaster Cities
Gleam. The books in the quartet are entitled: Misfits In America, Trail of
Tears, The Hopes and Fears of Future Years: Loss and Creation, and The Hopes
and Fears of Future Years: Defeat and Victory.

MSL's mission is to provide high quality, practical and affordable legal education to
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